Jay Electronica
Dear Moleskine (2012)
[Verse 1: Jay Electronica]
Have you ever ever ever been depressed so bad
It was a struggle every day not to regret your past
Feeling cursed like you never ever get your swag
And you was speeding down the highway when your threshold pass
When you cried all your tears out
And one page of your diary can tell you what your year ’bout
That’s a lonely place
My mama said “Son, why such a lonely face?”
Because the pressure’s on me
Plus I feel like Bill Murray trapped in Punxsutawney
Dr. Phil told me that I can sell crack or hit the army
Look at where we live at
Tell me you don’t hear that
Tell me you don’t feel that
Show me to the way out
Tell me when pastor Raphael gon’ reveal that
If not, man I’m outta here
I’m just a sleep walking robot that’s outta gear
I stick my nose out the water to the sky for air
Lama sabachthani
I’m trying to see light but the devil trying to blind me
The grim reaper walking with his shovel right behind me
Trying to introduce me to the untimely unkindly
I Walk the line finely like Johnny Cash
But I keep getting visits from the ghost of the past
So I spark another L then I go to the pad
[Bridge]

[Verse 2: Kendrick Lamar]
Yeah I can reconcile being depressed real bad
I’m a thinker not a drinker but still I hennessy drag
Alcohol numbs the pain like with novacane stabs
In your arteries pardon me but my city go mad
Via Compton California, corners with coroners and karma on em
Colors corresponding to gangs upon us
Common corrupted crip & piru’s cripple the city
Triple the crime, Bible nor the Qur’an can save
Welcome don’t be afraid, your city similar right?
Where the choppers kidnap the night and police silence your rights
Stare at the sky wonder will you live to see 25?
I’m 22 at 20 I knew I was against the odds
This kid named Jonathan was monitorin’
His momma & sister, his older cousin he honoured him
Anonymous bodies on his burner was astonishin’
To Johnny he might have been a modern day rider then
He walking outside again, he see the lifestyle of an active member
Pull out a mac 11, now his eyes is big
Fascinated by mayhem, what’s his cousin to say now?
He wanna be from the hood that he’s from and thats one
More gangster under the family tree, took em under his wings like KFC
Crip crazy, rocking matching t-shirts that says “the hood made me”
No love just spread slugs thats the policy, the leader and the prodigy
Now shorty do-wap, holdin a ou-wap, hanging with rah rah’s with blah blah’s
That sit on the block catching fades, hitting licks, going on missions with lunatics
A 9th grade menace thugging for 6 months, smoking like 6 blunts
An hour the power of banging, he was walking… *3 Gun Shots*
Little Johnny
[Outro: Malcolm X]
I think you’ll find, sir, that there will come a time
When black people wake up and become intellectually independent enough to think for themselves
As other humans are intellectually independent enough to think for themselves
Then the black man will think like a black man and he will feel for other black people
And this new thinking and feeling will cause black people to stick together
And then at that point you’ll have a situation
Where when you attack one black man, you are attacking all black men
And this type of black thinking will cause all black people to stick together
And this type of thinking also will bring an end
To the brutality inflicted upon black people by (black people)
And it is the only thing that will bring an end to it
No federal court, state court or city court will bring an end to it
It’s something that the black man has to bring an end to