Starting Over

Haha
Starting over this b*ch
The real rap only comes at halftime

See, my life always goes in these circles and circles
And circles and circles - around the curvature of birth
When it began they appeared to me as a breath
*inhale* *exhale* - the first cycle: done!
Seconds turned to minutes, and minutes into years
The other songs later on will get to that my dears
For now suffice to say, I've been pretty much okay
Trying to make a hollapiece from which I can spray, see
History is a long transparent hose
Thru which humanity proceeds to flow and flow
And floating in that flow barely breaching a toe
Is a little particle called Me, u know
Trying to make myself heard, and understood
And maybe even loved - as good as its absurd -
But the Word is the Holiest, the banisher of loneliness
To vanquish the darkness, just dip this sh*t in coziness
Cuz we are all unique frequencies in this sea
Temporal-spatially locally be how we
Perceive our reality, upon sits our mentality
Unable to get far in any one dimensionality
But the sea-hose above keeps a-flowing along
Never in a hurry to go anywhere
So let's enjoy that flow and stare at the air
And suffer thru the do-overs of our yesteryears!

Circles and circles (repeat)

See, as an immigrant kid from the Proletariat
Who wasn't supposed to have a soul on his own yet
Planted in a communistic heaven on earth
Where individuality's as precious as dirt
By some force of fate I will never understand
Old man was himself born a brilliant man
Caught up the revolution, no, not he
Taught himself thru grad school to master EE
Paid a house visit where my mom served him tea
Next thing u know, ha, well now u know me
But the bills to pay on 5 bucks a day
Put him on a one-way|runway to JFK
Life - the first 8 years - was a blurry bliss
Then came Tiananmen and a graveyards of kids
So big Herbert Walker - God bless his Texan soul -
Said: 'we'll give em a shot to STRUGGLE as one of our own'
Spake the world's benevolent hegemon thus
Plus, all your best minds are now belong to us
Dad was afraid but he fetched us anyways
So one day I can say whatever the f*k I wanna say!
Well now I'm in a place lookin' mostly the same
Except for all the fancy cars, and fancy bowling lanes
From time to time, tho, still that phantom on my knee
Reminder how much of a starting over you gifted me!

好好学习, 天天向上 (repeat)

VERITAS
HARsh was the VARD|word that was burnished
On the furnace, with the fur bear smirking
Turned this way, herd of lurking ursuses
In a permanent stasis, eternal faces
Heard the news: 'we want you for early action
Give ur passion plenty pasture to dash in
Where could u go that u could go for free?
Well most certainly, not in me, Mr. G!
What we need is the left leg of your mom
And the right upper cranium of he who gave u freedom'
So if u can't beat them then might as well just join them -
The Great American Crimson Premium
'Sure', they said, 'isn't that the point of our daily STRUGGLE?
In this promised land u work to elevate tomorrow...'
Well, when I get to college I'ma lose myself in videogames
And chasing girls and Fili-osophizing til the morning
Sure did plenty that, and it sure was lots of fun
I even met a couple of kindred spirits on the run
Looking back on u, knowing 4 years I'll be done
Another school, another hometown, another set of friends, son!
But you keep doing GOOD too, keep beating back tides
Keep that beacon for TRUTH lit, despite whatever the times
Keep calm and carry on all that legacy baggage
While erect ursuses look on, vestiges of past savage!

VERITAS (repeat)

Was about the DOUGH son, what else could it be?
Another poor immigrant coming up to feed
Trying to prove something he don't even know what
But he knows them in-call rates of sequined hotel sluts
So into that same big green hole I dove
Not knowing the yield of the 10-year note
Schooled in the ways of making it rain
With every kind of asset class on God's green plain
From homes, to loans on the homes
To notes on the loans, to CUSIPed standalones
Re-REMIC cowboys we were thru and thru
So when the mortgage crisis hit - haa, we were thru!
Now the money was nice, and the booty plenty too
And I'll admit I might've myself done a white line or two
But that's not really why, I chose to fall away
I didn't love how the traders said 'Hit the Bid!' all day
Imagine if that came out at the dinner table, okay
That dad had 'Hit the Bid!' like a dozen times that day
And u were his daughter, always thot ur dad the hero
But now u seeing how u really got here, while others got zero
The pain of that weighed on me but I didn't show it
Just 'another day, another STRUGGLE', that's how they told it
For four score more moons, I stayed thus unfolded
I'm a f*king dense-a* m*f*ker and I know it!

Homes, to loans on the homes
To notes on the loans, to CUSIPed standalones (repeat)

Now it gets even worse... watch
Building a business meant fully embracing the related notions
That now, instead of a P&L, I gotta *also* manage human emotions
Turns out the product u wanna make isn't really the point
The point is how many s*kers u can fool with a PowerPoint
And like any attentionspace with an interconnected audience
The stories that echo loudest are ones that ring inherently Freudian
'YOLO-FOMO makes the most mojo, bro
Don't u know now that's the way it go?'
Now u have a deal and a few hundo sticks in the bank account
Let's go bake a story we can fit an exponential curve around
A couple of big fish, make a big splashy news puddle
STRUGGLE to convince others to make THIS their everyday STRUGGLE
Sure that how it looks from the outside looking in
But inside is filled with red hemoglobin
Lots a fellowships formed, lots a brothers lost
Wonder if the windfall was worth all the cost
95% of small businesses die in their 1st year
So that means that there were
19 Christopher Columbuses that didn't make it
And 19 hundred other artists still waiting tables
For the day their Big Break takes them to the stellar mating stables
But I finally got to see one truth about
Money is like gravity: black holes abound!
And the biggest NO of all: never go it alone
EGO only goes countercyclical to GEO!

YOLO-FOMO makes the most mojo, bro
Don't you know now that's the way it go? (repeat)

Well, that's the way it is, as grossly appalling
My walking has been but a series of almost falling
What's really galling is I'm always stalling
Barely building up a run before life got me back crawling
Catching myself just in time from gravity
Has absolved a family of filial fatality
But it's human vanity, to invite divinity
Or look for a sign that says 'To Promisee:'
NO sorcery nor galactic glossary
Barely few new tools since Socrates
Bad days there'll be - eventually they pass
The next morning-dew adorns my windowglass!
And there a little instar is turning bright pink
Crawling out of its molten lifeless shedding
I wonder which'll be the last, and will it have wings?
I wonder what future entomologists'll think?
So, little Butterfly trying to come up
Just remember: it's high time to hold ur head up!
That come what may you've things they can't take away!
That God's always up there to listen, just pray!
And if not, go get my heater - 'la vida es fluida'
Don't ever trigger instincts of hombre from China
Cuz despite all my virtues, i have but one sin
I'll never stop, I'll never kneel, and I'll NEVER give in!

Haha
That's me singing
That's what u got me doing
I'll never stop
I'll never give in
HA