I’m big on underground hip-hop. In the past couple years, it’s about the only genre that really holds my interest in new music, it seems. The poet/spoken word/rapper Sage Francis is one of my favorite artists. I recently stumbled upon this remix he did with Saul Williams.
You might know Saul Williams from this commercial:
Anyways, this remix great and I think it might be better than the original song. So I thought I’d share: http://download.yousendit.com/55EC32592B5BE30A
The following verse is by Saul Williams in the song. And it’s just unbelievable, I think. A lot of people will slam hip-hop for being about only guns, money, and women. But that’s not the case and in fact, I think this song is one of the best written songs you’ll hear not just in hip-hop, but any genre period.
Oh God I think I’m dead
I can’t see outside my head
Brains and Bloods and cryptic gangmen,
czars and warlords breaking bread
Thoughts are thought, what’s said is said
I thought that (No, you said it)
I didn’t mean to think out loud, my tongue slipped
But who let it?
Let it be, let me be, let me go, naw let me out
My manhood nods and whispers
with my father’s screams and shouts
Dear dad, I’m sad you’re dead,
a new man standing in the pulpit
He bows before a wooden cross
and forces praise the culprit
I’m a tenor, in the choir
but I sing a different song
of how the where’s and why’s of now
all prove I don’t belong
But I’m staying, I’ve planted seeds
and plan to watch them grow
I’ve watered all my wishes, dreams,
and filled more seeds to sow
And I promise to learn to love the way I learned to fear
To unknot all the inhibitions tangled in my hair
To let my ego mound in piles around the barber chair
and make a graceful exit from my vexed and troubled years.
I’ve decided I’ve been invited to my own resort
where knights can leave their armor neatly piled by the door
And every woman, child, and man will gather by the shore
and study how sea lions swim in cursive
