That Power

All these haters

See you later

All that I could do

But you don't even feel me though

I know you know I know you got that power

That power

Oh, oh, oh

South CG but a nig' stay real

Though I'm fly, I'm Ill, I'm running shit

Three points, field goal

Rappers used to laugh like I tripped and fell

'Cause I don't stunt a gold cross like I Christian Bale

Yeah, they starin' at me jealous 'cause I do shows bigger

But your looks don't help like an old gold digger

Uncool, but lyrically I'm a stone cold killer

So it's four hundred blows to these true faux ****

Yeah, now that's the line of the century

**** missed it, too busy

They lyin' 'bout penitentiary

Man, you ain't been there

****, you been scared

And I'm still living single like Sinclair

Lovin' white dudes who call me white and then try to hate

When I wasn't white enough to use your pool when I was eight

Stone Mountain, you raised me well

I'm stared at by confederates but hard as hell

Tight jeans, penny loafers, but I still drink a Bodine

Staying on my me shit, but hated on by both sides

I'm just a kid who blowing up with my father's name

And every black, you're not black enough

Is a white, you're all the same

Mm, food like rap snitch knishes

'Cause it's Oreos, Twinkies, coconuts, delicious

How many gold plaques you want inside your dining room?

I said I want a full house

They said, you got it, dude

All these haters

See you later

All that I could do

But you don't even feel me though

I know you know I know you got that power

That power

Oh, oh, oh

Holler, holler, holler, holler at your boy

Like your dad when he's pissed off

Got flow, I could make a cripple crip walk

**** breath stank, all they do is shit talk

People want a real man, I made 'em wait this long

Maybe if he bombs he'll quit and keep acting

And save paper like your aunt does with McDonald napkins

How'd it happen?

Honesty did it

See all of my competition at the bodies exhibit

Yeah I bodied the limits and I get at them fakers

Motherfuck if you hate it, cremated them haters

So, my studio be a funeral

Yeah, this is our year, oh, you didn't know?

Yeah, I'm killing you, step inside the lion's den

Man I'm Hov if the O was an I instead

On stage with my family in front of me

I am what I am

Everything I wanna be

All these haters

See you later

All that I could do

But you don't even feel me though

I know you know I know you got that power

That power

This is on a bus back from camp

I'm 13 and so are you

Before I left for camp I imagined it would be me

And three or four other dudes

I hadn't met yet, running around all summer, getting into trouble

It turned out it would be me and just one girl

That's you

And we're still at camp as long as we're on the bus

And not at the pickup point where our parents would be waiting for us

We're still wearing our orange camp t-shirts

We still smell like pine needles

I like you and you like me and I more than like you

But I don't know if you do or don't more than like me

You've never said

So I haven't been saying anything all summer

Content to enjoy the small miracle of a girl choosing to talk to me

And choosing to do so again the next day and so on

A girl who's smart and funny

And who, If I say something dumb for a laugh

Is willing to say something two or three times as dumb

To make me laugh

But who also gets weird and wise sometimes

In a way I could never be

A girl who reads books that no ones assigned to her

Whose curly brown hair has a line running through it

From where she put a tie to hold it up while it was still wet

Back in the real world we don't go to the same school

And unless one of our families moves to a dramatically

Different neighborhood

We won't go to the same high school

So, this is kind of it for us

Unless I say something

And it might especially be it for us if I actually do say something

The sun's gone down and the bus is quiet

A lot of kids are asleep

We're talking in whispers about a tree we saw at a rest stop

That looks like a kid we know

And then I'm like, can I tell you something?

And all of a sudden I'm telling you

And I keep telling you

And it all comes out of me and it keeps coming

And your face is there and gone and there and gone

As we pass underneath the orange lamps

That line the sides of the highway

And there's no expression on it

And I think just after a point I'm just talking to lengthen the time

Where we live in a world where you haven't said yes or no yet

And regrettably I end up using the word destiny

I don't remember in what context

Doesn't really matter

Before long I'm out of stuff to say

And you smile and say, okay

I don't know exactly what you mean by it

But it seems vaguely positive

And I would leave in order not to spoil the moment

But there's nowhere to go because we're on a bus

So I pretend like I'm asleep and before long I really am

I wake up, the bus isn't moving anymore

The domed lights that line the center aisle are on

I turn and you're not there

Then again a lot of kids aren't in their seats anymore

We're parked at the pick up point

Which is in the parking lot of a Methodist church

The bus is half empty

You might be in your dad's car by now

Your bags and things piled high in the trunk

The girls in the back of the bus are shrieking and laughing

And taking their sweet time disembarking as

I swing my legs out into the aisle to get up off the bus

Just as one of them reaches my row

That used to be our row, on our way off

It's Michelle, a girl who got suspended from third grade for a week

After throwing rocks at my head

Adolescence is doing her a ton of favors, body wise

She stops and looks down at me

And her head is blasted from behind by the dome light

So I can't really see her face

But I can see her smile

And she says one word, destiny

Then her and the girls clogging the aisles behind her all laugh

And then she turns and leads them off the bus

I didn't know you were friends with them

I find my dad in the parking lot

He drives me back to our house and camp is over

So is summer

Even though there's two weeks until school starts

This isn't a story about how girls are evil or how love is bad

This is a story about how I learned something

And I'm not saying this thing is true or not

I'm just saying it's what I learned

I told you something

It was just for you and you told everybody

So I learned, cut out the middle man

Make it all for everybody, always

Everybody can't turn around and tell everybody

Everybody already knows, I told them

But this means there isn't a place in my life for you

Or someone like you

Is it sad?

Sure

But it's a sadness I chose

I wish I could say this was a story about how I got on the bus a boy

And got off a man

More cynical, hardened and mature and shit

But that's not true

The truth is I got on the bus a boy

And I never got off the bus

I still haven't