[Verse 1]
First breath, then first steps, among the first words
Was a curse, way before I heard my first rap
Fed Ritalin pills, around the time I chucked a size 7
Ball against the board through the net
It is what it is, the fragments remain
Like faces you can't remember as you stand at their graves
How many minutes were spent wondering what if?
How many hours were spent hating the shift?
How many times you got slapped for giving your parents lip?
How many times were they in the wrong and wouldn't admit?
If you can't be just, be arbitrary
And most people are, so wars're never resolved
Worked more jobs than most people had sexual partners
Everywhere it's the same, from corporations to startups
It's all entropy, chisels to the statue
From halcyon days to periods where you're destitute
People try to define things, perception is altered
By events, yet they insist that times change
Do this, wear those, and don't eat that
Love is such is such, criticism and feedback
Bad weather, gun violence, surgical air strikes
Polyamory, drug abuse, there aren't any fair fights
It's so easy to see the patterns
In the face of death, how much of it will even matter?
Maybe the truth is, that during confusion
We spend the only moments of our lives free of delusion?
We don't know who we are, because we're biased
By past actions and thoughts, so tell me what is left
If that's gone? A misguided quest for a sense
Of identity stored past capacity of memory?
Are we truly influenced by karmic energy?
What if death is our last act of charity?
Between faith and heresy, straddling the barrier
Between language and telepathy
The burden of interpreting the words we never speak
Whatever will be left, when the silence will deafen me
All that I've done, failed to do, and never would
All I withheld, they never knew and never could
All the songs, aborted takes, and beer bottles
What is left, if all that's gone tomorrow?
From birth to death, joy and the stress
Compressed, into no and yes, tell me what is left
Worst fail and the biggest success, labeled the best
Then forgotten, tell me what is left?
Love given and love lost
Sound mind, broken heart, tell me what is left?
Distill it down to the essence of what makes you
And then take a look at what is left...
What is left?
From digging in thrift shops to lecturing in universities. Erik has been producing and DJing since the late 90s. Releasing
material through The Pad Pusher Records and a slew of other record labels, Erik’s heady brand of jazzy, (largely) instrumental hip-hop/DnB has been praised by everyone from hardcore underground hip-hop heads, Drum and Bass purists to traditional jazz fans around the globe...more