Decoded (33 page)

YOU AIN’T GOTTA GO TO CHURCH TO GET TO KNOW YO GOD

I think for some people life is always like those street corners in Brooklyn, with everyone arguing for the superiority of their own beliefs. I believe that religion is the thing that separates and controls people. I don’t believe in the fire-and-brimstone shit, the idea that God will punish people for eternity in a burning hell. I believe in one God. That’s the thing that makes the most sense to me. There’s wisdom in all kinds of religious traditions—I’ll take from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, whatever. The parts that make the most sense feel like they’re coming from the same voice, the same God. Most of all, I don’t think what I believe should matter to anyone else; I’m not trying to stop anyone from believing whatever they want. I believe in God, and that’s really enough for me.

I don’t spend a lot of time on records talking about spiritual ideas in an explicit way, although I think a lot of my music sneaks in those big questions—of good and evil, fate and destiny, suffering and inequality. I think about life mostly in pragmatic terms: I think about behavior and intention in the here and now. But I also think about Karma. It’s a complicated idea that I’ve tried to make sense of. At the heart of a lot of these competing ideas of the afterlife and heaven and hell and thug angels and all that is the idea that if the universe is just, things have to even out eventually, somehow. And sometimes that’s a scary thought.

I’ve done things I know are wrong. There are times when I feel like I’ve suffered for those things, that I’ve paid back for my mistakes in spades. But then there are times when I look around me, at the life I have today, and think I’m getting away with murder. It’s something a lot of us who come from hard places go through, and maybe we feel a certain amount of survivor’s guilt for it. I never imagined I’d be where I am today. There’s a line in
Fade to Black,
the concert film we did for
The Black Album,
where I say, “I sometimes step back and see myself from the outside and say, who is that guy?” Over time I’ve worked to get more clarity about my past and present and to unify my outside shell and soul, but it’s ongoing. Inside, there’s still part of me that expects to wake up tomorrow in my bedroom in apartment 5C in Marcy, slide on my gear, run down the pissy stairway, and hit the block, one eye over my shoulder.

SENSITIVE THUGS, YOU’LL ALL NEED HUGS

Sometimes this uneasiness comes out in my songwriting. I was on vacation when I started writing “Beach Chair.” This was after my semiretirement with
The Black Album
and I was really trying to sit back for the first time in my life and get off the grind for a minute. My vacation of choice—even back before I got into music—has always involved water and warmth. I wanted to write a song that matched my mood, a song about the good life. But almost immediately, the song went left. It begins
with the line “Life is but a dream to me” but turns into a meditation on ambition and the laws of the universe, on questions I can still only ask but not fully answer.

It’s a song that I think of as one of the hidden jewels in my catalog. Some people absolutely love the song, but other people find it confusing and out of character. But just as I tried to do something a little different on my first album—get deep inside the conflicted mind of the hustler—I’m still trying to push hip-hop into new places. In the song “Regrets,” off my first album, there’s a line addressed to my mother—you used to hold me, tell me that I was the best—that can almost be taken as soft. But what, niggas are supposed to be so hard that their mothers never held them? It’s kind of ridiculous. In “Streets Is Talking,” off of the Dynasty album, in the middle of a pretty hardcore song I threw out a line about my father leaving me—I ain’t mad at you dad, holla at your lad—which might seem odd, because shouldn’t I just be saying, Fuck you, dad, I hope you die, instead of opening myself up to be played by the man who abandoned me? But that feeling was real; I couldn’t deny it. Honest introspection has always been one of the tools I use in my rhymes. Songs like “Beach Chair” are just an evolution of that same technique applied to broader questions, the kind of questions that even the grimiest street cat wakes up wondering about at three in the morning.

I think for hip-hop to grow to its potential and stay relevant for another generation we have to keep pushing deeper and deeper into the biggest subjects and doing it with real honesty. The truth is always relevant.

Did It Cost Me too Much? (0:40)

Life is but a dream to me
¹
/ I don’t wanna wake up / Thirty odd years without having my cake up / So I’m about my paper /
24-7, 365, 366 in a leap year
²
/
I don’t know why we here
³
/ Since we gotta be here / Life is but a beach chair / Went from having shabby clothes /
Crossing over Abbey Road
⁴
/ Hear my angels singing to me /
Are you happy HOV?
⁵
 /
I just hope I’m hearing right
⁶
/ Karma’s got me fearing life /
Colleek are you praying for me
⁷
/ See I got demons in my past / So I got daughters on the way / If the prophecy’s correct /
Then the child should have to pay
⁸
/ For the sins of a father / So I barter my tomorrows / Against my yesterdays /
In hopes that she’ll be OK
⁹
/ And when I’m no longer here / To shade her face from the glare /
I’ll give her my share of Carol’s Daughter
¹⁰
/ and a new beach chair / Life is but a dream to me / Gun shots sing to these / Other guys but lullabies /
Don’t mean a thing to me
¹¹
/ I’m not afraid of dying / I’m afraid of not trying / Everyday hit every wave / Like I’m Hawaiian / I don’t surf the net / No I never been on MySpace / Too busy letting my voice vibrate /
Carving out my space
¹²
/ In this world of fly girls / Cutthroats & diamond cut ropes I twirls / Benzes round corners / Where the sun don’t shine / I let the wheels give a glimpse /
Of hope of one’s grind
¹³
/ Some said HOV, how you get so fly /
I said from not being afraid to fall out the sky
¹⁴
/ My physical’s a shell / So when I say farewell / My soul will find an even / Higher plane to dwell / So fly you shall /
So have no fear,
¹⁵
just know that / Life is but a beach chair / Life is but a dream / Can’t mimic my life / I’m the thinnest cut slice / Intercut, the winner’s cup / With winters rough enough /
To interrupt life
¹⁶
/ That’s why I’m both / The saint and the sinner / Nice /
This is Jay everyday
¹⁷
/ No compromise / No compass comes with this life / Just eyes / So to map it out / You must look inside / Sure books can guide you /
But your heart defines you
¹⁸
/ Chica / You corason is what brought us home / In great shape like Heidi Klum / Maricon, I am on / Permanent Vaca / Life is but a beach chair / This song is like a Hallmark card / Until you reach here / So till she’s here / And she declared / The heir / I will prepare / A blueprint for you to print / A map for you to get back / A guide for your eyes / And so you won’t lose scent / I’ll make a stink for you to think / I ink these verses full of prose /
So you won’t get conned out of two cent
¹⁹
/ My last will and testament I leave my heir / My share of Roc-A-Fella Records and a shiny new beach chair

Lucifer, son of the morning! /
I’m gonna chase you out of Earth
/
Lucifer, Lucifer, son of the morn-ing …
¹
/ (I’m from the murder capital, where we murder for capital) / Lucifer, Lucifer, son of the morning! / I’m gonna chase you out of Earth / (Kanyeeze you did it again, you’re a genius nigga!) / Lucifer, Lucifer, son of the morning … / So you niggas change your attitude / ’Fore they asking what happened to you /
Lord forgive him
/
He got them dark forces in him
/
But he also got a righteous cause for sinning
²
/
Them a murder me so I gotta murder them first
³
/ Emergency doctors performing procedures / Jesus / I ain’t trying to be facetious /
But “Vengeance is mine” said the Lord / You said it better than all
⁴
/ Leave niggas on death’s door / Breathing off respirators /
for killing my best boy,
⁵
haters / On permanent hiatus as I skate / In the Maybach Benz /
Flyer than Sanaa Lathan
/
Pumping “Brown Sugar” by D’Angelo
⁶
/
in Los Angeles.
⁷
Like an
evangelist
⁸
/ I can introduce you to your maker /
Bring you closer to nature
/
Ashes after they cremate you
⁹
bastards / Hope you been reading your psalms and chapters /
Paying your tithes being good Catholics
¹⁰
/
I’m coming
¹¹
 / Yes / This is holy war /
I wet you all with the holy water
/
spray from the Heckler Koch auto-
/
matic all the static shall cease to exist
/
Like a sabbatical I throw a couple at you
/
Take six
/
Spread love
¹²
to all of my dead thugs / I’ll pour out a little Louis ’til I head above / Yes Sir / And when I perish / The meek shall inherit the earth / Until that time it’s on a poppin,
Church!
/
Like Don Bishop
¹³
/ the fifth upon cock either / Lift up your soul or give you the holy ghost please /
I leave ya in somebody’s Cathedral
¹⁴
/ For stunting like Evel Knievel / I’ll let you see where that bright light lead you / The more you talk the more you irking us / The more you gonna need memorial services /
The Black Album
’s second verse is like devil’s pie please save some dessert for us
¹⁵
/ Man I gotta get my soul right / I gotta get these devils out my life / These cowards gonna make a nigga ride / They won’t be happy ’til somebody dies / Man I gotta get my soul right / ’Fore I’m locked up for my whole life / Every time it seems it’s all right / Somebody want they soul to rise / (I’ll chase you off of this Earth) / I got dreams of holding a nine milla /
To Bob’s killer
¹⁶
/ Asking him “Why?” as my eyes fill up /
These days I can’t wake up with a dry pillow
¹⁷
/ Gone but not forgotten homes I still feel ya / So … curse the day that birthed the bastard / Who caused your Church mass /
Reverse the crash
¹⁸
/
Reverse the blast
/
And reverse the car
/
Reverse the day, and there you are
¹⁹
/ Bobalob /
Lord forgive him we all have sinned
²⁰
/ But Bob’s a good dude please let him in / And if you feel in my heart that
I long for revenge
²¹
/
Please blame it on the son of the morning
²²
/
Thanks again
²³