The Bank

0:18

I came up where the cold was heavy on the windowpane

Every conversation had a doublemeaning, nothing plain

I learned to speak in riddles 'cause the riddles kept me sane

The kind of tongue that swings two ways, two doors inside the brain

I read the thing your saying and the thing you didnt say

The gap between your words is where I learned to navigate

I built a house of language where the walls articulate

The architectures pressure tested, crumbling in debate

These rappers pour foundations out of hype they cant inflate

I dig beneath the surface and I find the counterfeit weight

Im not above the culture Im the thing the culture ate

And spit back out with structure, now Im standing at the gate

The meta isnt posture its the only honest take

Im rapping about rapping 'cause the whole craft is at stake

The industrys a tightrope and theyre handing me the rake

Im using it like compass finding signal through the fake

Every bar I drop has got a grounding beneath the floor

Im not the loudest in the room but Im the one they listen for

The sharpest things the bar you never feel until its yours

I dont arrive to play the game I come to keep the score

 

They say the game evolved Id argue it devolved

a thousand songs that sound like one, the patterns getting old

The complexity got traded for a template made of gold

They autocomplete the passion and the passions getting cold

I write the bar and let the bar decide what it will hold

The meaning opens slow it blooms when you sit in the cold

They building brands, Im building language neither bought nor sold

Im in the scripture of the cipher while they scroll and scroll

Let me get specific I dont do the vague approach

I watched them move the goalposts every time they felt encroached

The ones who claim the throne are usually the ones who need the coast

I need the center, where the pressures real and self imposed

These battle rappers dress the wound Im asking how it closed

These conscious rappers build the crown Im asking who exposed

The gap between the ego and the truth thats what I wrote

Im not the hero in this story and Im not the ghost

Im something in the middle that they dont have words to quote

I pour the bar like concrete let it cure before I float

The critics write the eulogy before they read the notes

Im not a show Im what the silence says between the quotes

 

Im not the child of rage I came through the watching

Through cataloguing everything the eye would keep on clocking

The way a neighborhood decays the way the clocks stop locking

The way a man becomes a myth the myth begins with mocking

I been the subject and the author both at once its shocking

How different every story gets depending who is walking

I wrote the verse about the block before I left the block

I wrote the verse about the clock before I learned to stop

The retrospective hits different when the wound is still hot

Im pulling double duty Im the surgeon and the shot

And if you think thats layered, wait until Im not

These rappers giving you the weather Im giving you the plot

Im not above the anger I just learned to aim it right

You point it at the mirror, itll teach you how to fight

I broke apart the self and put the pieces back in sight

The bars are just the evidence the verdict lives in light

The thing about this craft is that it never gives you cover

Every lines a deposition, every verse another

Session on the stand and Im the witness and the author

Testifying under oath to something deeper than the roster

 

The system is a sentence and they punctuate with prisons

The grammar of the gavel drops the period on the vision

I been studying the syntax how they structure the decision

How the language of the law becomes the surgical incision

Every verdict is a verb it acts upon the noun

The noun is always someone who was born beneath the crown

They teach you how to conjugate your silence, swallow down

The ones who speak the loudest always get the mark not gown

Im moving through the metaphors I cant afford to drown

I map the exits every single time before I enter town

The chess is always moving I been watching every piece

I played the rook, the bishop even practiced as the priest

I learned that every label is just clothing for the beast

You name the thing, you own the thing the naming doesnt cease

These rappers claim theyre kings but havent earned a single crease

In the crown theyre wearing it was borrowed from the lease

Ive been alive inside this craft long enough to see

The only thing worth building is the thing that lets you be

And being isnt granted its extracted from the seams

of every compromise you never made thats what it means

 

I had a conversation with the ceiling at midnight

Where neither side was wrong and neither side was right

I been the contradiction living comfortable in the light

I preach about the darkness 'cause the dark is what gave me sight

Im not a saint I catalogued my failures in the verse

Laid them out like evidence so everybody heard the worst

The bravery isnt courage its the knowledge of the curse

That everything you bury has a way of getting there first

So I put it in the open in the bar, in the line

Made it into something so it couldnt make me blind

You call it art, I call it therapy same design

The difference is the audience is watching me unwind

I been the type to think about the ending in the start

The exit plans embedded in the center of the art

Im building and Im falling Im collapsing with the heart

simultaneously and thats not tragedy thats art

These rappers show the highlight Im handing you the reel

The uncut version where the feelings almost too real

Im comfortable uncomfortable thats part of the deal

The wounds the whole curriculum Im teaching you to feel

 

I started this in cold and Im concluding with the same

Everything Ive written is a letter signed in flame

You reading this like scripture but I wasnt playing games

The bars are self referential I been burning through the frame

I said Im rapping about rapping now the poem eats itself

I said Im building language now the language builds the shelf

That holds the books that hold the bars that held the things I felt

Every feeling was a card inside the hand I was dealt

I played every suit and every rank without the help

Im not above the table, Im not swinging below the belt

Im at the edge of everything, a foot above the blank

Page I started with I wrote the ocean Im the bank

Six verses deep and every verse was watching every other

Every bar a sibling the whole thing is a structure

Aware of its own making call it something further

than rap Id call it proof of life signed past the border

The door I leave unlocked the handle feels the same

In every hand that grabs it I designed it just that way

I didnt build a monument I built a place to stay

I wrote it once the room stays open every day