for everything we left for everyone who left us i'm thankful for my breath even though it's hard to get up memories ache some days the pain doesn't let up i remember your face and it's enough to keep my head up hope we're here to embrace once the pandemic lets up i lost a friend, diabetic, he was so young he would of loved to see the people rising up, like all around the globe people marching for our Black lives in ways they haven't since the fight against apartheid masked up just to go outside we face a virus and violence, we risk our lives if i die, i often wonder what i'll leave behind will the precinct burn? will the sleeping learn? will the world that we tried to build finally emerge? like a phoenix in flight out of ashes and dirt it's more than these words of love and of work tryna take all the hurt and make something of worth for the young ones now who gonna grow up and search... this is an offering from times uncertain moments within a shift as the whole world's hurting it's a trauma that will visit you i'm certain how we make it through is how we love, how we listen how we stay connected even through all of the distance it's imperfect, and dusty as these tapes are my lost ones i never knew i'd make it this far...

contraband body soul in the audio underground railroad flow with the river God's gonna trouble the spirit dancing and mind gone free we still can't breathe everything we know of home we've been forced to leave travel light ready to go instinctively we are still all running like thieves in the night following the North Star we got away with our lives for every time we were told we would not survive then rose from the ashes to see new heights Harriet Tubman Phoenix reborn with a mic unconfined by time shotgun at the side we will rewrite tomorrow to defend Black life these are lyrics for the days that happen after the fight worth more than a favorite, or a click, or a like when they capture your body but you got freedom of mind if i mysteriously die know that my spirit would fight if i die in custody it was not a suicide if they kill me for my voice know that my soul is alright if they take me in the morning they'll come for you by night ...so be ready to fight for Mumia, Sundiata, Assata, The MOVE 9, and anybody, anywhere that had to serve hard time i don't even care if you commited a crime you can't justify how they dehumanize and torture our folks behind enemy lines media fills em with fear so they believe these lies like "it's rehabilation and not a plantation" take one trip north of NOLA, have a look at Angola it is pre civil-war south happening right now it'll make you want to burn every prison to the ground i owe it to my elders for the life i found hidden in pages that they wrote on in cages in coded language that raised me up underground railroad, the star light is us to break the walls it all starts inside 'a ya and don't stop til all of the bars are dust if i mysteriously die know that my spirit would fight if i die in custody it was not a suicide if they kill me for my voice know that my soul is alright if they take me in the morning they'll come for you by night ...so be ready to fight

if your freedom and mine are really bound together we need to make sure we're not standing on each other's backs both of our bodies have been fetishized soul and mind i don't want to live inside their eyes or internalize lies that they say 'bout you cause i know nothing that they say about me's true it's televised, mass manipulators bait and hide stories of a people that could really humanize anyone but white men is always other'd why? i don't want to center them in any of my rhymes but we become a synonym to "them" when we don't try to really see ourselves and the space we occupy i know i am light-skin, masculine, american passport holding born with the privilege to be blind to anybody on the outside if i choose to self-mutilation, men do it for power and our sensuality gets completely devoured we become loveless, and just to get touched sex is more of a drug yet, abuse isn't mutual so often we hurt hearts, it's like we all lost ours for freedom we go far, but knowing yourself is where solidarity starts i know i can't see it through your eyes so i listen for your vision even when my hands tied if oppression is connected then our freedom's intertwined gotta make sure we don't harm each other when we fight for our freedom, for the land, for each other, for our lives for our people locked behind bars & enemy lines for Black & Indigenous lives, for disability rights we don't get free if we leave anyone behind Our communities are intertwined Though we've forgotten it Through decades we've internalized They invented these racist myths about me and you It's gonna take my whole lifetime to undo The anti-Blackness in my community The same tactics they used in the Philippines Control the land through white supremacy Centered whiteness, made up the model minority If your liberation is bound up in mine We can not just pick and choose whatever we like Filipinos in art, dance and music I have benefited so who do I align with When I was a Brown Queer in all white spaces You gave me a language from which to name it It's ongoing work to confront what's inside The way we've hurt you The way we fetishize My history shows we fought side by side From General Fagen to our worker's rights Our resistance shows we were organized Against a nation that thrived off genocide So if I feel discomfort, I need to lean in Because it means my solidarity strengthens It's gonna take more than a post and a like Defund police Center Black Trans lives i know i can't see it through your eyes so i listen for your vision even when my hands tied if oppression is connected then our freedom's intertwined gotta make sure we don't harm each other when we fight for our freedom, for the land, for each other, for our lives for our people locked behind bars & enemy lines for Black & Indigenous lives, for disability rights we don't get free if we leave anyone behind

these songs shouldn't even exist i grew up in a house without instruments but took whatever we had to make music with it's not what your given, but what you do with it snot-nose have-nots had to learn that quick for them years top ramen was our only dish we learned to remix every single thing in the fridge and shared anything we had with every neighborhood kid when half of East Africa had a key to our crib it's how i learned the village isn't just a place you live but a way of being that you carry with over oceans and cross whole continents we are not lost souls but we are a bridge broke language we carry traditions in old lyrics our bodies rewritten in at my best, it's not me, i'm just listening there's ghosts in my pen that won't let me go they take hold of my body till i press record a living echo of what came before ancient dreams that have changed the world we weren't supposed to make it, i pray for guidance now it feels like the real ones are dying out there's no room for ego, no time for doubt i'm trying to carry on a legacy i learned at my Mom's house come on... we needed any kind of job a chance at education, a life at all we all were escaping war walked across a desert took a boat from the shore just trying to eat take my kids if you can't take me i didn't want to leave i take home with me sahara sands fertilize the amazon butterflies... man-made lines are wrong birds fly with the seasons the world is still breathing migration is natural migration is natural migration is natural Mom's front door used to be like a portal to another world that we came from before with smoke from the bunna and that stove-top shiro so much love i didn't know we were poor but when i went to school, and when i went to my Pops it was a different language that i had to learn hard i don't mean pronunciation but what's in the heart they teach you to isolate to go far but i know i will never be alone at all and i have failed if i rise while my people fall i'm the first in my tribe to make music a job now it's the most shared profession in my family y'all i think we all still healing generational scars didn't hear about war from my uncles and aunts but they all went through it and i know that it haunts their dreams, i can't sleep i hear them call there's ghosts in my pen that won't let me go they take hold of my body till i press record a living echo of what came before ancient dreams that have changed the world we weren't supposed to make it, i pray for guidance now it feels like the real ones are dying out there's no room for ego, no time for doubt i'm trying to carry on a legacy i learned at my Mom's house come on... we needed any kind of job a chance at education, a life at all we all were escaping war walked across a desert took a boat from the shore just trying to eat take my kids if you can't take me i didn't want to leave i take home with me sahara sands fertilize the amazon butterflies... man-made lines are wrong birds fly with the seasons the world is still breathing migration is natural migration is natural migration is natural

it's been a long time... ya'll never heard of us, that's fine i've been Vibin' since Tribe was Maruadin through Midnights a follower of Styles of the Fellowship, Free to create me through mixtape spacing and i remember when a Resurrection saved me my Sense was in Common with this fool i never seen from a city that i know i've never been to but it rained plus he, felt the pain like me influenced by P.E. & BDP Ice Cube, Roy Ayers & Bob Marley my headphones then, were my only company i was awkward socially, never fit into a peer group imagine growing up with only music there to hear you it's only there to heal you, pierce to the root it can hurt while it moves you and shock you to life what else would i do ya'll, if i didn't write? record & perform songs? options are long gone and far out of sight cause i remember 1995 "it's a suiciiiide" felt like it's Me Against The World plus i was Ready To Die scribing with my first pad, pen listening to Pac when they sniped him (damn) now i'm still writing, reciting & rocking with a mic in palm it's like 7 years gone and i can't stay calm they still got me feeling Trapped like a walking time bomb and i need this now more then i ever have call it hip hop, rock, soul, blues or the jazz music of the future fuck bringing it back heart chasing from mixtape making to basement cathedrals we drew sacred texts on these walls and respond whenever, wherever the spirit calls they talk to us and walk through us they talk to us and walk through us and i don't even have a minute to hate there's too much to do for justice now so i livicate this one for love like Mamie Till-Mobley did for her son knowing that these lynchings are still going on and on me, i can't even fathom that focused calmness just yet like a single mother gets when poverty tightens it's grip and her kids don't understand what having no money is when a reflex to live is all that you know you got dancing cuz your spirits caught you'd rather body rock til your body rots than to feel a world without music the blues don't stop another child gets shot, and the cops are the culprits a woman gets raped and the number one suspect could be her best friend many men don't comprehend we didn't start the fire this violence created us yet we still perpetuate it and i don't know who to trust i don't believe in no fantasy R&B kind of love i don't need to helplessly fall in to fear of what life what be like without limits, empty traditions, out of date definitions from a colonizer's tongue dig it? i'm building here, specifically, Northwest Pacific speech Southend to CD regions, reaching peeps wake from they sleep singing this melody, like yo... they said God believes in me, do i believe in me? yes i believe in me, nobody else could set me free heart chasing from mixtape making to basement cathedrals we drew sacred texts on these walls and respond whenever, wherever the spirit calls they talk to us and walk through us they talk to us and walk through us