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The You Essay
"Maiden:"
any amount that works for you if you like what you hear here. Thanks so much for your support!

Buy album on iTunes // Watch album on YouTube // Download album of AIFFs
11. Coast to Coast (This Is the You Essay)
12. The Plan
13. A Rap Record
14. Crzy
15. DILU?
16. Alottagirls
17. Booty
18. The Doctor
19. Sombre
10. Torture
11. Vader
12. That Shit Is Nasty
13. Fuck Friends
14. You Didn't Want Me Then
16. Love Rap
17. Cocaine
18. Serious Lyricist
19. AA's
20. What Do You Want?!


2. The Plan

Chorus:
The plan is: Grab the duckets and say "Fuck It" to the critics, hey now! (repeat)

Yo.
You could say that I'm the weakest that you ever heard, and I wouldn't even listen to a single word.
'Cause I don't even need the use of all ten fingers to enumerate the people who could bring this rap singer to the dirt, the canvas, the floor, the pavement.
But other people cannot go where they went.
They've known me since childhood; lost in the wild woods.
Fog-filled, Christian-drilled and milk-spilled, and bilked for the bulk of my genius at an early age, whereas y'all jumped in at a late page.
The point at which I become a great sage and all y'all mic imitators become played like a flea-flicker by a quarterback.
Quarter-past your first coronary bypass.
Caused by an attack from the Quarter-pounders and Big Macs.
There's too much talkin the flack, jack!
Y'all get put on the back burner fast and surpassed 'cause your talk about the burners and gats is straight wack and lacks "creativity and intelligence, but they don't care cause their company is selling it."
And shit be smellin as high as y'alls' Heaven, and sounds all kind of fucked-up, just like a Theremin.
Maybe like the bodies found in flick 'Seven' when Brad Pitt and M.F. start shit.
It takes heart to get behind your art and start to depart from the well-trod path of cash.
Word up to my man Art Scott who got trashed. We had fun, tho; left, right, hold and pass.
They say, "Those who can do, and those who can't teach."
And those who can't teach write a critique for the weekly magazine on the music scene, but such slings as these couldn't even dull the sheen of my armor, which is my sense of self.
My top hip-hop motto is, "Go for delf."
The only thing a critic set on 'stealth' could affect is some bullshit Grammy chillin up on a shelf, so, um...

Chorus

3. Crzy

Yo! I had it asked a million times of me, "What's wrong with you?"
I wish I had a million dollars so at least I knew.
I'd pay for half-a-million tests, and when the tests were through,
I know they'd only say, "What's wrong is that he's not like you."
I got a million different reasons to evade the public,
Not the least of which is cause I know how much they love it.
Whatever goal they set themselves, they set me above it.
They may be wearing a ring, but it's my heart they covet.
When I step in my own jam in my homeland it's like, "Bam!"
But, step out of the tent and it's no-man's land.
I'm holding plans to make fast and slow jams and grow fans, but no man's gonna slow my fam with old plans.
Holding up hands and demanding a payment at the border -- some kind of toll-tax!
I pull stacks of untold facts and exact my revenge which extends from my pen like an ax-wielding limb...
(...and if you had a secret wish, I wouldn't know what it is...
...and if you had a million kids, I wouldn't know what gives...
...and if you had a great thought, you wouldn't know it lives...
...and if you hadn't got with me, you wouldn't know these kids...
...and if it makes you sick to ask, well then, it's not your biz...
...but if it doesn't make you sick, you'll get a lot of gigs! ...bitch.)

4. DILU?

Sitting across from you over the morning sausage and coffee.
The way the light illuminates your cheek I have to ask myself, "Who is this girl who is my world?
And would she stand up for me in the midst of moving traffic?"
An intersection of interconnections causes inner-reflection; later over dinner I'm still inspecting the will and testament of my illest investment thus far: our romance.
"Wanna go dance?"
"Yeah, sure," you take me to your car.
As we make our way to the bar raindrops hit the roof-top; panic attack flashes like I'm all alone in the world.
Of all the girls in the world, I feel it's right that you're the one.
And, yet and still, I feel I'm sure there's one better; I feel I've met her.
I feel her sweater-cashmere-between my fingertips.
I see her lips, smell her perfume; she's in the room.
Constructed thoughts loom like patterns on the loom; emerging slowly.
And you don't know me, of this I can be sure.
For were it true, no man would you more quickly aver.
And yet, my dear, I love you for letting me get this near and letting me in.
Never let 'em say "It'ddabeen better to never begin." It's not true.
I got you, you got me, we got true love of some version and stature.
I had to ask her, "How do you know you love me?" She rolled her eyes.
"You know I despise those philosophical questions you're always questin on."
But I kept pressin on until she started undressin' down to less-than-thongs.
Nice answer, but that doesn't mean the question's gone.
I guess I'll address the rest in the next nest of love songs.

12. Fuck Friends

Allamandre Scarsdale and I were in love.
Executing the designs of Heaven above.
I had a real good feeling every time I'd enter.
In the ways of love we were each others' mentor.
But, like all things beautiful, we too had to emerge and age, wither and die.
The tears from our eyes mixed with our kisses; we had moved beyond while still retaining a fond connection to our past love.
We tried our best to quit each other and to see others, but held each other as the-most-recent-best-lovers.
We'd come over to each others' house with parents gone and get it on; our reservations apparently gone.
The same old song for the pillow-talk: We gotta walk.
"But it's so hard!" Making jokes about my cock.
Go a second round. Reckon that I'll put it down one day, but till that day we can play and tell our friends we're: Fuck Friends! "Let's do it again." "Ok." (x 8) At the age of fifteen my family moved to Scarsdale, or, really, just outside.
White-trash suburbia where cars would fail; they would come there to die.
The entire town population: 155.
My hopes of a good life died by the riverside.
A young kid from Austin with too much self-pride.
I realized early on my companions'd be few.
Filled up my lonely days with a whole lot of nothin to do.
A sophomore at the local high-school. It was the next town over, we were bussed.
I didn't trust a single soul, kept my thoughts to myself.
This habit seemed both to bolster and erode my mental health.
The first person I befriended was Wendy.
Wended her way into my thoughts with her eyes that shot laser-beams from across the bus; acted so tough.
The only thing we had in common: we were loners.
Snowballing meetings; I proceeded to telephone her.
More the tom-boy/intellect than cause a boner.
We logged hundreds of hours of conversation before we went on our own vacation: a camping trip to the local frog/toad/mosquito-infested man-made lake.
Demanded I not fake a single feeling; sex was almost an afterthought.
"But don't go thinking that we're boyfriend and girlfriend." And to that end I kept my promise.
Fancied ourselves good actors but the whole class knew.
The only ones who cared less than us were them.
So sad to see it end, cause I loved being lovers with no attachment. Chorus

15. Cocaine

I'm hyped up! Living like a real-life American!
Straight injection to the veins in my neck.
When I feel the prick of hypodermic, I'm sick, but in a good way.
It's only a good day with drogas to ingest and time to waste away.
Face the day when I'll stop? I don't think so.
Sink so low I'm like a bottom-feeder.
What's a fuckin party without a bag of reefer and a fucking fifth?
Fucking nothing. I'm fucking some chick I've never even met before.
The sweat from her pores enables me to dig my high more.
What the fuck I got to hide for?!
Smoking crack rock right outside my front door.
Whoops! My friends pull me back; throw em through the slide-door!
Glass smash as they land on they ass.
No door for three weeks; you think I spend my cash on refurbishing?
Man, what the fuck you think?! Don't even talk to me till I've had my first "j" and drink! Verse Two:
I came home the other day (la! la!) err-lay because the principal kicked my ass out,
'Cause I smoked the whole class out (la! la!) and he didn't wanna hassle with the middle-school drug-dealer.
My momma-mommy, she cried so longy that her teardrops watered down her glass of Merlot.
"Hello," she never said when I hit the entrance.
Fingers gripped the cigarette, looking very tense and self-righteous.
"How could you smite the good name of this household?!"
Her voice was just as cold as the brew they allowed me with the meal that night which made me think of prohibition.
Last thing I learned about before my ass was skidding on the sidewalk...
Yo, I think there's something wrong, man... I think there's something wrong... (repeat)

17. AA's

Chorus:
AA's in my system. Loud enough! (x3)
Yo, I can barely hear that shit, man. Turn that shit up!

A-yo, fuck the Web!
My arterial to your head is a set of headphones; lock-nut on your music.
Simile rot-weiler.
I describe your compositions to my dad.
He says, "bad," plus my mom.
When I'm on the moon, stardust under my boot as I scoot across the lunar surface.
I work this 33 percent gravity with my bootprint, leaving behind Glenn impression.
Then messin, in reverse, back with you.
Attacking you, sorta, with the cuts that I recorded.
A certified record-exec catching the wreck, paying myself, shaking hands, doing deals so these two dudes can feel right where I'm coming from.
Coming in your eye from across a large distance like Phife. Twice! You're a seat-cushion.
I'm mushin your head. Steam-powered piston headphones pushin, your head's blown.
A dead zone circumscribed by my work which is live, living, a Frankenstein of dead parts.
Formerly dead hearts, turning-blue-to-red hearts.
As the veins of my flow go southward word-of-mouth turns your flat plains into my delta system.
As you're listening, I'm achieving my mission: To preclude street-dudes even conceiving of dissing! Chorus

More About This Album:

The You Essay was supposed to be a vehicle for my crew to rock on (my crew at the time was supposed to have been Meesh, Uncle Mic, Eso, and some extended members of Oldominion: Bishop, Gash, Freeze, Bits and some other Seattle cats maybe Native maybe Specs maybe Beans) but the problem was, none of these people beyond the first three was a very good friend of mine at all and we certainly weren't really in a crew. So, I didn't personally have enough lyrical ideas / raps for a whole album, nor did I have the friends to fill in the blanks. So what you end up hearing is a bunch of production ideas with sparse lyrical content.

I suppose I could always try again to find rappers for these beats. I've fantasized before about random people on the Internet recording their own raps to these songs but so far it hasn't spontaneously happened as it's supposed to.

"Crzy" is perhaps my proudest achievement of this kind (classic boom bap) of production. The samples I used are just too dope. Eso said he thought it was a perfect piece of production when he heard it (coming from a musical genius such as himself, that's saying something.) I'm pretty psyched about "Torture" too... Uncle Mic loved "Yung Gurlz". I dunno. I think a lot of this stuff is awesome. A bit bummed I couldn't rustle up the enthusiasm to get some heads on these tracks... Had the cart in front of the horse at that time in my life; was putting no energy into friendships then wondering why I had no friends.

The majority of these beats were made by triggering samples or sampled instruments on my E-Mu ESI-32 sampler with my Korg X3 keyboard along with some synthesized instruments on the Korg. I recorded all my vocals onto MOTU's Digital Performer on a Macintosh in bedrooms in Seattle and did the skratching myself. I mixed and mastered the album myself. I made the cover artwork.

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