The Abolition of Manchild

[Verse 1: manCHILD] Double down stroke, pound my head on concrete til it cracks Double take, doubled over from this double cross on my back Doubled my pleasure and pain with the quickest double timing On the double, single out these cats that's having trouble rhyming Triple threat vet, set it straight while rookies muddle through Just call me the 23rd letter because I double you Knuckle through other crews with jabs, hooks, uppercuts and combinations Patience, you can't get inside the levelheaded throroughbred The one who sets the foundation for movement like a riverbed Don't subscribe to gun talk, so I give a what what your trigger said Spit leaded graphite, keep my heart in my hand so that I can grasp life Police the depths of my soul with a billy club and flashlight That's right, the underworld has numbered my days The track plays as I stumble across the stage And rage against my rage in the sight of fleeting time Because it's not the grapes of wrath that produce the sweetest wine I bleed rhymes when I'm wounded, seems to happen more and more Lie face down in a puddle of my own metaphors on the floor And my heart pumps the art, so what will happen if I pass on They could never last long, so the band plays my sad song [Verse 2: manCHILD] Soul Heir the manCHILD 2001, dead on arrival Skin beneath his fingernails points to a struggle for survival Clutching doubles of his vinyl with rigamortous in his throat In his mouth, we found the words for the greatest song he never wrote He was stabbed, choked, hung, burned, drowned Strapped to the ground, forced to listen to thug rap gagged and bound This manCHILD took hip-hop where no one else could take her For that he was dragged for 40 blocks behind a Lincoln Navigator Until it crashed into a pacer, flipped and landed on his neck Blasting Gloria Gaynor's "I will Survive" from the tape deck A blank check inside his pocket because you can't cash respect In a word, his dental records spun at 33 1/3 Keeping his word through pain and death through static and distortion Defeated 333 emcees post mortem So, check your local listings to see his body on display Soul Heir the manCHILD survived by his family and his DJ [Verse 3: manCHILD] Look through the eyes of a manCHILDless world so I can see I don't like the way my beloved artform looks without me A barren wasteland, artists afraid to face fans Where they seek and destroy b-boys, forbidding them to breakdance Where no one takes a chance because the patterns stand in place Follow the formula, play the part, and you'll get more than you can take Where they raise hell to be a man and no man searches for the answers Without me, it's all just hype men, dat tapes, and back up dancers Hold my banner for knowledge, wisdom and understand integrity Every city Mars ILL goes, I leave another piece of my legacy And if I thought ya'll would benefit, I'd paint manCHILD out of the picture They fall and keep it to themselves, so I'll stand and deliver Consider this, I understand this game is hit or miss Whether graf writer, b-boy, turntablist or lyricist This is serious, like water to a flame, Abel to Cain If you stopped doing what you do today would hip-hop stay the same? If your name never graced a marquis, what are we losing? If nothing changes in that world then tell me, what's your contribution? Do you emancipate enslaved minds, or you just want to feel free? It's not easy, but manCHILD's here because you need me