Pharoahe monch

The LP

I Juswanna Chill

Mad Scientist

Stakes Is High

Itzsoweezee (HOT)

(The voice is heavier now, the '90s rhythm slowed down by the weight of years. It’s quiet, like talking to oneself in an empty room.)

Funny thing about silence... it's the heaviest damn thing in the world. Used to be the noise never stopped. The block was a symphony, you hear me? Laughter, tires screechin', Biggie blastin' from a window, my brother clownin' somebody... that was the soundtrack. Now? Now I just hear the wind whistlin' down the street, and it sounds empty.

I walk down these blocks and I see ghosts on every corner. That stoop right there... that's where me and my cousins planned our whole lives. That court is where my boys and I thought we were the next Knicks. I still turn my head sometimes, to holler at my brother when I see somethin' wild... then the quiet hits me right in the chest. A gut punch, every time. The whole damn choir is gone, son. It's a solo act now. No friends, no cousins, no brother. No f'body left on the stage with me.

And this ain't even my Brooklyn no more. The Ville... they turned it into a damn theme park for people who used to be scared to get off the train here. They power-washed the soul right off the concrete. And Caracas? Caricuao? That's just a dream I had a long time ago. Another ghost. Two whole worlds I came from, and I can't go home to either one. They're just gone. Vapor.

All the stories, all the inside jokes, all the beefs... they live and die right here, in my damn head. I'm a walkin' cemetery. And people see me, they see the gray in my beard, and they think, "Damn, he's strong. A survivor." That ain't strength. It's a curse.

It's painful as fuck. You know what it's like to be the only one who remembers? To have a whole universe of people alive in your head but not a single damn soul to sit and have a beer with?

Yeah, I'm the last man standing. But you ain't standin' tall when you're the last one. You're just... left. Left to watch the credits roll on a movie everybody else already went home from. And you just gotta sit there, alone in the dark. Word is bond.

Queens

Pharoahe Monch

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