Dear Nas
Where does hip-hop go when it dies
Is it all just maggots and flies
Or will hip-hop rise and come again
Come again Jay-Z
Back again with Beyoncé and them
That seems a lie
Are you dispensing wisdom because I want to listen
Or are you just throwing out this and that verbal
Tit for tat mixing, fiction and fact
Will hip-hop Fade to Black or merely rot to rap
And who killed hip–hop
Cause I heard she suffocated in a CD case
Mass marketed, 106 and Park-eted
Sprite sponsorshiped
Or was it Jacob the Jeweler, no dude was ever cooler
Hip-hop had a G, see fooled ya
Got you buying platinum nooses
Throwbacks to white abuses
Useless
Or was it the Romans and Pontious Pilot
Got his panties in a bunch and got violent
Rolled up his sleeves and got physical
Cause with crosses, resurrection and God’s Son albums
This shit has become Biblical or
Was it me
Did I kick hip-hop
Till it was sick, didn’t stop
Till it was shit-fused pop
Till it was blue in the face or
White in the face or
Was it me
Cause I know at hip-hop’s birth the room smelled thick of dark chocolate
And decades later
My white frosting might be ruining the recipe
Me pretending the Teflon, ghost riding the Nissan
Tryna put a few pounds on so I can fill out the Sean John
Cause this movie plays like a detective movie
With hip-hop chalk line, pool of blood deceased
And then the camera pans up and there stands me
Standing over with the smoking barrel of my wallet
You see Nas, I agree with you
Hip-hop is dead but it spread daughters and sons
Rappers tryna climb the number one singing the same new song
Of misogyny and guns
Spitting in the face of their fathers
Public Enemy, KRS-One
Hip-hop is dead but it spread daughters and sons
A generation of little faces being taught to shun
Peace, humility and education
When in California they estimate the number of jail cells to build
By the number of fourth graders who can’t read
Hip-hop is dead but it spread sons and daughters and
I ain’t a player, I just fuck a lot
Doesn’t leave room for fathers
And hip-hop’s buying college Crystal and shit to snort
Brenda’s still gotta baby that she didn’t abort
And hip-hop’s not been known to pay his child support
So forget Mick Jagger
Papa or that goddam magazine
Hip-hop was the original Rolling Stone
Traveling across the country, fucking kids consensually
And essentially leaving em alone
And eventually leading em to unknown
And essentially stripping me down to this poem
And I’m not standing here trying to show em that hip-hop isn’t beautiful
Because it is
Hip-hop is power
But when did clenched fists relax to just this
So if you’re there hip-hop
This is a prayer hip-hop
You may have died for our sins
But please come back cause once again
We are ready to begin