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