1. |
||||
Well I never get a moment to sit alone/
Spitting on tracks/ leaned back/ get a little gone
I don't really know why/ the seasons blow past so fast/
Where'd the passion and feeling go?
Got flooded in the rain/ they put it in my brain early on
I was put on earth to speak a song/
Now I'm getting old though/ I should be spitting gold/
Instead of holed up in house with a stick of dro
But it's tricky, yo/ Trying to navigate the feeling
That you'll never blow/ even with a hella flow
You gotta let it go/ all of the burdens
On your bones and your heavy throat.
Monsoons/ when they come/ wash you
How soon/ will they come?
|
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2. |
||||
Crashing at Mama's house/ mashing up on the couch
Flipping the television/ checking Obama out
Heavy with all the doubt/ that come/ from living broken son
Smoking some/ Rolling the tongue along the mouth
Yeah papa’s out/ so I’m here/ the coast clear
Old fears/ trickle away and wander south
I saunter out/ in the yard/ sit with the dog
Scribble a song/ riddle it raw with marking out
Erase/ Chase grace/ and then chase the old ball around
Til I’m falling down/ go back into my fallen crown
Dream of calling out to crowds/ hollering back
Before all of the camps/ food stamps and dollar sacks
And all the lack/ that I’ve mapped these past years
The black spoons/ baboon backs/ and tracked tears
I follow back/ and unclasp these trapped years
The glass spheres/ snowglobes cracked in black beards
I’m crawling out/ from under the rock and the rubble
Speech/ shuttling over beats/ the heat subtle
A solemn mouth/ hauling the body behind her
With mama out/ calling reminders
I’m crawling out/ from under the rock and the rubble
Speech/ shuttling over beats/ the heat subtle
A solemn mouth/ hauling the body behind her
With mama out/ calling reminders
|
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3. |
||||
///My pops said/// Take these shells/ + little rocks
They’re protection spells/ for the walk/ through the hell
You done made yourself/ now take yourself/
from the house where I raised you, praised you, son I’m dazed you
Couldn’t pull your ass up a little further
Smashed up, raising a glass/ losing the fervor
You used to have it in church, but now you lost it
Tossed in the dirt/ shit it hurts to be your father
Why bother/ sacrificing to see/ half your life in a seed
I pray every night/ in the afterlife I get peace
These years tore me apart/ string by heart-string/
Darkening rings/ under my eyelids
Never could sleep without silence
Every ambulance that passed by/ blaring a siren
I saw your body inside, purple with violence
And when I could sleep/ I would dream visions of dying
I’m trying/ but I can’t look you in the eye
Same nose as me/ same shoulders and acne
Same filthy mouth that made your mother cry
Time after time/ boy, crime after crime
[Chorus]
Go son/ Take some bread for the road, son
Now I heard that you wrote some
Sad songs for me/ But I can’t stand to hear you sing
///Every day pops I work on my craft
Out on the park bench in Pritchard/ just birthing a raft
Building an ark from the dark of the past/ Trying to float
In a paper boat/ maybe I’ll crash/ maybe I won’t///
I don’t give a damn, son/ it’s all gravy
Your ramshackle singing and dancing don’t pay these bills
Mama’s ill, and the more you’re around
Stealing pills/ It’s just dragging us down
///I understand but it’s different now/// How is that
///Dad I’m clean/ I’m a different man/// You’re clean for now
But you’ll crash on the couch, spend cash on a pouch
Once a fiend/ always a fiend/ son, get out my house
///How can I change when I can’t even get a chance?
Just washed the windows and the floors and then did your sedan
Cooking you meals and you can’t look me in the eye?///
Take your broken wings and just fly
[Chorus]
///Trying to get back onto my feet here, pops/ A couple days
up in my old room/ eating/ it’s hon’ be cold soon
I need to put on some weight/ sit at the Eighty-eight
That gramma left for me in her wake/ playing some soul tunes///
Stop right there/ proceed with caution/ I’ll slap you
Right out of your chair/ rocking a cold stare
Keep your grandmama’s name out of your mouth
I’ll drag you under my truck/ straight out of the south
You killed her ///No I didn’t daddy I healed her
Or tried to/ Sitting beside her/ singing haikus///
But then you’d dig in her pockets/ Looking for rock hits,
Right til her cold eyes rolled back in their sockets
///I was broken then, pops/ smoking and hopeless
A shell of a man/ selling plasma/ having coke fits
I never meant to cause anyone else pain/ I’m saying
Can I just get some help?/// Go help yourself
[Chorus]
|
||||
4. |
04 Syllable Spill
04:21
|
|||
Well I go on the lam and I never come back to the land that I left behind me
So-so/ chewing on no doz/ composing new flows in a cold climate
Far gone from the Carolina Highlands/ Far away from the Baltimore skies
Get high/ push through the darkness/ kinda blissing/ just swerving wide
From the land that I once knew back on the east/ I'm a beast for the get-and-go
Grab all of my shit and just blow/ nothing on hand/ anything goes
Anything rolls off of the tongue/ Put it on tape for the people at home
Reaping that song/ time and again/ put it on vinyl and climb in the bins
Well I land in the bay and I feel the wind blowing on my tongue with a taste of the sun
And a man say, “say hey, son, do you wanna blaze one, and I say, are you cray son?”
then he pulls out the beauteous fruitiest, smelling all stank/ bootyous gluteus
And I take one draw and break raw and take off on a song and a tune it gets
Lodged deep in the brain and the same song follow me around till I scrawl it down
All the sounds that I hear falling from a tongue/ spilling from a lung in the park/ in the plum dark
Spill into me/ build over illy beats/ still/ just reeling me back to the source
Doing work in a cipher circular/ pulling me back to them raps on the porch
Think of passing the torch to the little ones/ Sitting them down/ just fiddling around
And the reason I rapped in the first place/ doing this sound for the kids and the crowds
See I never gave a damn for the rat race/ all the fake-facing and chasing of crowns
All I wanted to do was just chew on this language/ tangling/ wrangling sound
No matter what I try to do/ I can't find my way back to you
And I can't find the reason why
Nothing really holds me now
I'm feeling cold/ and down
I lost my hold
And syllables spill/ vermilion wets my soul
It's killing me slow/ so ready for death/ these million debts I owe/
So close my eyes and let the skies convulse and pulse their purple light into the cold
Til lead is turned to gold/ and letters turn to heat
I burnt my scroll/ so desperate/ nothing was left/ I needed to eat
To warm my frozen feet/ Now I'm mourning the loss of these songs
Rolling along in a freight and holding my flint to a stone of a beat
Until it sangs, man/ And it's so strange, ain't it?
A world of flames, man/ and we got pain in it
We just gon' lay it down/ til we find some way around
The hard effects of living in this world before it weigh us down/ before it lay us out.
Pushing the pieces together/
the puzzle of painting the walls of a prison with paintings of wide open spaces
and chasing the odd liberation of waking with strangers &
shaking the fears of a traveling man and the tears of a clown that's unravelling
battling all of these harrowing maladies/ dressed up for Halloween
rattling candy around in their cavities
Nothing really holds me now
I lost my hold/ somehow
|
||||
5. |
05 Snowblind
02:42
|
|||
Open up them flagons of whoa/ The winter winds're blowing
Tits cold/ it’s eighty below/ Keeyon’s dick froze
We huddle up under the underpass/ thick coats
Boots beaten in by the wind/ beyond sick so
We gon’ set these fires in black barrels
And hack carols up like lungs/ and wax careless
And pass wine/ pass time/ into the night/
Til fires fade/ and we all shade/ right outta sight
It’s all white/ shuffle up and cut through the snowdrift
Cold lips/ blue in the face/ pain in my rolled hip
Slip a pill in my throat/ the last one
And sing so slow/ spilling smoke like ash lungs
A fast tongue/ only gets you so far, son
You gotta roll deep/ packet of old souls and geeks
Creep solo/ they're gonna catch you close to the earth
find you face down/ sleeping alone/ under the dirt
God works/ so damn mysterious here
He hardly come round/ yeah, he disappearing and shit
I look up/ to the ominous clouds and shout flows
He drops down buckets of snow
Up in my army coat/ seeking asylum
A clue like an igloo/ something to clutch/ no one’s an island
Walking up in churches hurting from the inside out
Fingers purple from the winds I bout
Sleeping on heat grates/ heaping up meat/ free plates/
And nap while the priest say his piece/ could sleep weeks straight
But can’t get down with these curfews and work boots/ see
I gotta live free/ rolling with these cursed few
I eat moss off rocks in T. Weaver
The park warden shining his light/ that Ward Cleaver
He can’t maneuver like me/ it’s tomfoolery
Could peel the jewelry off his wrists/ he stay cluelessly
Running under the bridge/ hunting my kids
These dark figures rolling through snow/ holding to fifths
So/ golden and blissed when we slip from his grasp
For another night/ sleeping on grass (glass)/ far from the past
God works/ so damn mysterious here
He hardly come round/ yeah, he disappearing and shit
I look up/ to the ominous clouds and shout flows
He drops down buckets of snow
|
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6. |
06 Streetsleeper
01:13
|
|||
Beaten under bridges where I live/ with my kids
Trash lids open/ on the lam/ out the pen
When I ran shit/ never thought I’d see the damn clan spit
On the old god/ with his odd gold teeth
And his raw-soled sneaks/ now it’s all so deep
Protect your nest/ projects infect the best
And reject the rest/ caress the flesh so patient
Then leave your head meshed with the pavement/
In Laymen’s/ terms I been spurned by the turned back/
Burnt black/ dirt-nap/ taking bird baths latched tight/ in
A rest stop stall with my raps so black
And my last thoughts scrawled on the cracked white walls
I miss my moms/ I kiss the picture in my palm
This system’s making victims of us all
I listen for your call but it never crawls underneath my sheet
To shake me from my penance in the street/ it’s deep
|
||||
7. |
07 Dream Sequence
02:11
|
|||
I want it all/ white wings/ bright green/ until my flight leaves
Taking off/ filled with light beams/ in all the tight seams
Floating over the ocean/ holding a whiskey water
Moving hocus pocus and focus upon a frisky daughter
Shake it back to the land/ turn off the bright lights
Set the stage/ bed down for days/ until the night’s bright
Colors are coming in/ swimming along the walls
Take her to the waterfall/ naked under the stars
Daily killing it/ filling a moleskine with lyrics
Room full of instruments/ building with illy friends are brilliant
No jobs/ mortgages/ rob stores and get off/ Ladle
Every bit of life in a box/ label it rock
Lock down/ till beats knock and blocks drown/
Godzilla foot/ sweet spots get knocked down
Drums under my thumbs/ Humble the dumb
Crumble all of these/ buildings that breed
I want it all/ solar everything/ living off of the map
Just cat nap/ and wake up and rap/ and make a fat snack
Lamping back in the yard/ dreaming of rat packs revisited
Rocking on stages til my liver gives
With my brother beside/ so uninhibited
Take off the tux/ rocking in socks and black chucks
Wrapped up/ bottles of bourbon and fat blunts
And the last words outta my mouth is Rap Sucks
|
||||
8. |
08 Sex Fire & Death
02:13
|
|||
I’m on the street sweeping cigarette ashes/ having flashes
Of leaving this life/ just skip up a couple classes
The magic of purse-snatching/ lurking/ nagging
Work rabbits under my hat/ it’s old habit
Like old fabric/ comfortable/ Gloves fit/ fuckable
Run swift/ dip in a dive and roll high
When I stroll by pockets to pick/ I’m Cliff Huxtable
Blend in with any of them/ many a men
Housed within a single body/ on a given night
Silver might slide in your room/ bare in the ribbon light
Hiddenite/ jewels and gems/ slip to the dresser
Professor Lex/ tools and tims/ speak confessions
Under my breath/ mumbling sex, fire, and death
A choir kept/ roaring its hex/ firing my chest
In the highest clef/ stumbling back into the passage
Fumbling/ handles of doors/ trapped on the third floor
A child wept/ sirens arose/ I a-froze
Till quiet crept over me calm/ speaking a psalm
Fly through the windows and blinds/ as vines snap
Laugh/ airborne like passion/ wings massive
Never come back to the land/ feeling release
As some peeps on the balcony stand/ watching police
scurry round and round/ wringing their hands beetles and ants
Float above/ loaded and dance/ holding my only chance
Hit the ground running/ a hundred and ten
With jungle gym/ vertical bars spun in my head
And another bid looming/ I zoom/ lucid maneuvers
& lose ‘em while a necklace hang/ reckless/ dang
Slang/ pawn windows in shame/ Faking my name
Julio McGooley/ schooling the game/ fool in the flames
//Spill out the other side/ wallet is waterlogging it
Pockets ripped/ slip in the bar/ playing the optimist
Tomorrow morning be hollow back to a couple dollars
Hollering/ Back at the sun/ rattle a ragged lung
Slung low// fallen from riches hit a couple kitchens
Head to the goodwill and get a shoe and a fitted suit
Then to a neighborhood hid/ up in a stolen skin
Spy/ with my eye on a benz/ violet lens
Mens/ and women walk past/ waving and laughing
I’m looking class/ jacket and pants/ shoe shine: glassy
Splashed/ with sample cologne/ ambling/ stoned
Slash through the damp on the lone/ flashing a phone
Through vile clones/ making notes to dialtones
When night falls, I’ll be back/ jacking these homes/ blown
|
||||
9. |
||||
Sipping on shitty tea/ sweetened without a lemon &
Eating a meaty meal you wouldn't feed to your beagle &
Reading on some remedial media featuring Jesus &
Feeling greedy for something to hold/ something old
I need to read a novella/ compel a fella to
elevate from a cell and get well away from a hell of pain
Sail away/ on a tide of vitally verdant/ internally burning
words that get turning/ learn to dispel the gray
The walls of my cell are falling for real
I'm crawling to the top of the hill/ with Alighieri
Carrying with me a Merriam's Dictionary-Thesaurus
And various books of western philosophy/ getting lost in these
Words/ and getting found again/ and beginning to spin
My own mythology/ if you follow me then you heard
How I've rewritten my own autobiography
An audiopsychologist rocking until I'm gone
Until they kill all the lights/ I'm gonna fight
Writing letters home on a metal desk in the heavy quiet
The elegant LMNOs and elemental inventions
of a man at the edge of a legend on instrumentals
Taking it day-to-day/ pray I don't fade away
The halogens that rattle me/ painting my battle gray
Always/ lying awake and night and day we escaping
Into the pages that shape our imagination and breaking away
Shaking my head/ quaky, aching in bed
Until I took a dip in an archaeology text
Open a paper sarcophagus and get lost in the foreign marks
On the ominous ark/ anonymous art
Holding my history glistening in my hand like an automatic
Til all of the static fall off a fallen planet
Rustle pages/ a hustle, shuffling cards/
As mathematics assemble to crumble stumbling blocks
Until they kill all the lights/ I'm gonna fight
Writing letters home on a metal desk in the heavy quiet
The elegant LMNOs and elemental inventions
of a man at the edge of a legend on instrumentals
Ain't incidental I need a pencil to blow/
Sickest sense of the flow/ through the fences I go
I need to dig on a classic and find some magic/
Lost in a thorny grove/ a story carried me home
|
||||
10. |
10 Threnody
03:55
|
|||
It's the end of the night and I'm packing away the books
Looking out of the littlest window to overlook
The city full of graffiti galore/ stories of pity and war
Littered with gritty people that pour
White liquor over their livers until they're warm
Throwing bottles into bodies that shiver/ winter the storm
Sleeping in doorways/ their families ran away
Panicky little animals/ loss of humanity
I cannot cry mama, my eyes have been dried in
A life that leads me alone, out to the highlands
So insular, but no island/ peninsula
One minimal limb just holding onto a pen
And when I wrote it I floated over it high
Built a hideaway faraway from the day-to-day grind
And when I spoke it, it floated into the night
Running through empty gutters and spilling into the quiet
I shudder under the weight of it all/ cover the cross
and mutter paeans to beings/ bring on the fall
I cannot flip within walls that collar me in
A scholar can bend light/ but not when he's inside
And all this reading is just feeding a need to get up
And out of under the lock and key of the cops
It's gotta give/ summon the water and let it fall on top of us
Solomon's seal/ calling the
Tidal messiah get higher/ bury the spires and telephone wires/
scraping the sky and making it cry out
Mama Tsunami/ Come on and call through the walls of the
crumbling prisons/
humbling visions/ run with the fishes
Pound me/ crown me/ drown me/ ain't no difference
Just take me from this prison of inches/ this shit's ridiculous
I'll never bend a knee/ send me into the sea
And wash the curse of man from the land/ birthing the beast
Let go
Let go
Everyone here's looking for some kind of escape
From drugs to the hunger for paper/ none of us safe
Another day/ another devil we can't escape
Chasing revelry/ painting over the pain
Reins/ let go/ overlord Gepetto
he can't make me a marionette/ his silhouette folds
Behind a curtain of clouds/ tumbling down over ghettos
Thunderous sound/ sound echoes
Settling over the bleak meadows of oak ripe with broken defeat
Til the alchemist laugh and shackle the gold from our teeth
Crack-speckled vernacular/ rapped
to cast a hex into Dracula's back
We so immaculate/ leak passionate speech/
til the last of us/ pass through the teeth of old/ smashing it
Put to the lash/ we been pushed to the back
Now the waters rise/ swallowing skies/ it's all black
Fall back into the sea/ O my enemy
I sing while I'm spinning this venomous threnody
In the wings/ Spilling these little syllable seeds
And we fly on the backs of these thieves/ hatching so free
Let go
Let go
Tidal messiah get higher/ bury the spires and telephone wires/
scraping the sky and making it cry out
Mama Tsunami/ Come on and call through the walls of the
crumbling prisons/
humbling visions/ run with the fishes
Pound me/ crown me/ drown me/ ain't no difference
Just take me from this prison of inches/ this shit's ridiculous
I'll never bend a knee/ send me into the sea
And wash the curse of man from the land/ birthing the beast
|
||||
11. |
||||
Raised in the Orchestra/ Hazed by the dozens
Mom worked door-to-door/ Pops was a plumber
Tried to pull me up by the thumbs
But I land in the slammer every time/ the phenomenon of crime
Sang in the autumn/ Did plays in the summer
Moms looking for a sign/ Pops going under
Tried to pull me up by the thumbs
But I land in the slammer every time/ the phenomenon of crime
I used to sing in the choir at church
Bells rang when I hit high notes/ in my throat
You would sit in the back/ and just clap/
Your wild hair pulling stares/ everyone there/ laughed behind your back
Til they smacked my last nerve/
Slashed tires, sugared their tanks, and scratched words into paint/
Smashed stained glass windows and cursed
I went berserk, Mama, cause I was hurt, (I never meant to hurt you)
They took me all the way/ To state on holiday
A juvenile/ so damn small and faraway
In the tank// learned how to spar & flow hard
But once I did my time I was addicted to crime
And never could arise out the demons in my mind
Fiending for the grind/ That phenomenon of crime
Bombing all the lines/ With a racked can of Krylon
Nylon/ stretched over my head with some pipe bomb threats
Don’t cry mom/ I’m coming home to see you
Once I get outside of this evil cathedral
Raised in the autumn/ & blazed in the summer
Moms worked all the time/ Pops crunched numbers
Tried to pull me up by the thumbs
But I land in the slammer every time/ the phenomenon of crime
Slang in the autumn/ Did plays in the summer
Moms looking for a sign/ Pops going under
Tried to pull me up by the thumbs
But I land in the slammer every time/ the phenomenon of crime
You put your dreams on me/ and set free
Every passion I chose/ basketball to the dance hall
Sacrificing your own/ so I could grow
So fat/ so fast/ & such an asshole
Who never really knew all the little things you’d do
But when I’d see you crying in the middle of the room
I’d scribble little lines, a riddle or haiku
To brighten up your eyes for a minute or two/
Eventually/ I’d fall back in the dirt/ Remember you
calling to work/ faking ill just to pick us up
Robbing liquor stores/ Fuck it, liquor trucks
Or getting beat half-dead, exchanging fisticuffs
Eighteen, angelface, Mama’s little man
Strangling bank clerks, and wrangling sedans
These hands/ used to paint/ beautiful scenes
Of you and me/ Now they break so brutally
Mama see/ You’re a saint/ I seen the halo
It fades when I come round, though/ it’s just a gray glow
I apologize for the drama all the time
I’m trying to leave behind this phenomenon of crime.
Raised in the Orchestra/ Hazed by the dozens
Mom worked door-to-door/ Pops was a plumber
Tried to pull me up by the thumbs
But I land in the slammer every time/ the phenomenon of crime
Sang in the autumn/ Did plays in the summer
Mom's looking for a sign/ Pop's going under
Tried to pull me up by the thumbs
But I land in the slammer every time/ the phenomenon of crime
[[[ I was the one/ Inspired/ the son
Baby brother running beside/ we like one lung
til we turned tired from the firing of blunts
Shotguns burning our throats/ crumbling coke/ into
One too many as your sons grew skinny
You’d sit at home/ all alone and rub pennies
Til the face fell off/ and sell off/ your last links
To get my ass out of the clink/ Just think ]]]
I shoulda brought the dream/ to our family
Working on the clean/ have you living like a queen
Instead I fell/ deep under the spell of the streets/ had you
Pulling strings/ out in the sleet/ New Year’s Eve
Hat in your hand/ begging help from the neighbors
With Dad on the lam/ Yeah, he couldn’t stand to stay there
“Say there, could you spare a buck or two for bail?
My boy’s in jail”/ They just stare/ you’re so frail
And pass a party hat ‘round the room/ while balloons
Escape toward the sky while you're shaking in your shoes
Never meant to make you cry, mama, that’s the truth
They closed the door on you/ left you out under the moon
I miss you bad, Mama/ Swear I’m coming home soon
Make the bail somehow/ And vow that I’ll do
Anything/ to bring/ harmony back in your mind
And finally resign the phenomenon of crime
|
||||
12. |
12 Let it All Fall Away
05:25
|
|||
I wake late/ in the afternoon/ and play spoons
Into a bowl filled with oat milk and spilt Os
When it hits home, panic/ a fit with spit blown
Her message’s been rattling my phone/ spelling I’m late
I pull on some drawers/ splash on my face, and then escape
Through the barred doors/ hop in a car with scarred floors
And put on a tape—maybe that latest Utility Fog/
Maybe that Finale dub from 2008/ now we’re on our way
Look out the window/ watch the tenements slide by
The tenants mute/ the symptoms of drive by
The boarded facades—the gutted houses hidden from God
And underneath it all—a sense of the deepening fall
We slide/ past the derelict blocks and then we stop,
At a house of cards/ calling her name/ she’s in the yard
with her shoulders out/ I’m swallowing hard,
Girl—get in the car, we’re headed down to the reservoir
Take me to the water’s edge/ watershed/ shedding
The grit of the city/ skinny dipping/ bodies get waterfed
Just float/ let it all fall away/ Wade into the reservoir/
Shake it off/and we’ll call it a day
Follow your bobbing head out to the island
The sun is swallowing the sky/ your laughter like a siren
Pealing off of the trees and boulders/ spilling over me
Indigo water holding me tight/ just like a cloverleaf
Light/ tickles across the water/ skips like a stone
Until it sinks and we slip out for home/ follow behind you
Find a door in the gathering fog/ in the lathery dark,
Laughing in starts, blind/ we feel our way back to the car
Back in the center city/ cigarettes litter the curb
The club’s aglitter and I’m flipping legitimate swerve
Outside just spitting/ then head in for a spin and a serve,
Sit for a gin and a word/ spilling back onto the curb
The stars are far away, and God’s on holiday,
There’s nothing shining in the sky besides the color grey
I wanna call you up right now and hear the water play
Across your tongue, pick me up Sunday/ it’s time to escape
Take me to the water’s edge/ watershed/ shedding
The grit of the city/ skinny dipping/ bodies get waterfed
Just float/ let it all fall away/ Wade into the reservoir/
Shake it off/and we’ll call it a day
|
Plucky Walker Asheville, North Carolina
Plucky Walker is a lost island of rap, a freestyle savant whose hunger for improvisation and contrary disposition has led to
a bitter lack of recorded output. A sworn enemy of swag, focused on vibrant storytelling
and armed with a dizzying array of styles, his story is one rife with near-death experience, drug abuse, larceny, heartbreak and incarceration. In many ways, the story of rap itself.
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