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Intro (Listening For Hope)

from Medium Talent by Tom Swifty

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about

This is the oldest verse on the project, with some revisions. I probably first wrote and even recorded a rough version of this song about 15 years ago, back when I first started working with Death Ray Scientific and the other Twin Cities rappers, producers, and djs who would continue to be my main collaborators throughout the rest of my years. I like to open my albums with a single verse, usually pretty stream-of-consciousness style like this one. 

lyrics

Fearless like Jet Li, let me speak about my pet peeve
The dominance of ignorance over common sense
Bombing dense skulls, seeking the brain inside
My plane collides with kids playing in the rain on slides
All these images come and go with the waning tide
I try to move forward but always feeling way behind
Stop, play, rewind, fast-forward to the time
When I've reached the mountaintop and no longer have to climb
But half the time I feel like I'm just not the mastermind
Of my own fate, annihilate my foes, the last laugh is mine
Yeah, I blast the lines of yayo set before me
Then I cloud my mind with reefer smoke and it controls me
So I'm listening for hope to get me through the rough things we're discussing
Cause it's something and looking ain't yielding nothing
This bomb production, it influenced my construction
Shit rappers only do this for the bling and that's disgusting
Standing on this stage that I'm hoping you'll be rushing soon
Feeling like my rage is boiling up, they gonna crush the moon
If you and I don't stop em, take more than shells to drop em
We gotta make our souls battle-tested like clothes by Propper
Drop the science like appliances that's broken
Drift away unnoticed just like half the words I've spoken
Cloak and dagger, staggering through 1940s noir-scapes
I reach Metropolis and face my fate with higher stakes
Will you be machine or man when years become millennia
Or maybe what you bleed may open many doors intended for
The reconstruction, no apocalypse is coming
Just a new beginning, no more choosing between distant cousins
May the will of the people rise, may the Republicans fall
May this song open the eyes of each and every one of y'all
And make you wanna wake up, there's no progress without pain
After a thousand broken promises, this nonsense still remains
Let's kill the lames and break the chains that you be paying money for
Let's open up our brains and do something that ain't been done before
Like underscore our words in blood, pull fans like it's a tug of war
And fumble for a world above, this one's asunder torn
Stalk my block like a lion about to tear out all your stuffing
Hold it down until these clowns realize that I ain't bluffing
Looked around until I found that life was the McGuffin
Now I'm listening for hope cause looking ain't yielding nothing

credits

from Medium Talent, released August 13, 2023
Produced by MCCRD. All lyrics and vocals by Tom Swifty. Turntablism by Elsewhere. Recorded at Stickout Studio (Minneapolis, MN) and engineered by eRok4a.

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Tom Swifty New York, New York

Born in Springfield, Illinois, and raised in the southern Midwest of Missouri, Ezra Stead became Tom Swifty in Minneapolis when he began rapping live and recording quality tracks over ten years ago. Before that, they were... not so quality. Back in Minneapolis after 10 years in NYC, Swifty's latest albums prove that he's never been better. ... more

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