East - Ivy Sole

Imma rap about how good I am at rapping cuz they told me to

Rap about how bullets make the metaphors real potent

Imma tell you how the bullets make the body into window

Shoot the breeze and shoot the fade and never keep the screens too open

If you ponder it, the trap is just a startup, just some product

And you catching cats or marta, even septa with the starter coat

Cold world but Imma show every single artichokes, the green is reason,

and the rhyming and the resolve

When we solve a problem, it’s reaching to the root

And I’m undone, unraveling everything I took as truth

I took for granted living on the east with the hitters

All that hustle in the heartbeat, all that grinding through the grimace

If I could go back, I’d pen a love letter to idlewild

To rama road and harris and the wendy’s on independence

Where it was knocking if you bucking in the trenches til it’s finished

Where I saw that the beauty ain’t real without the grit up in it

What you know about the east?

All I know is what I’ve seen

It ain’t nothing like the coast

If you know it how I know, you’ll see the forest through the trees

See I ain’t east east

Just a Presby baby from the west

Went to middle school up north

And went southside for all the rest

You pressing luck and testing my patience asking if I’m from the fo'

If you ever had a question, now you got it from the go

Before the locs before the fro, it was lo on my chest

Spending summer on the pavement marched and played clarinet

See I balled for a minute, but I never got finished

Ambition had my mama driven she had to hit that reset

One semester deep, I started loving being Black

Then we moved again I chucked the deuce and that was that

But 07 was a year that I’ll never forget

Bumping Da Drought everyday in ISS

They gon say that I ain’t from there, and yes I guess that’s true

But I know the eastside like Ella knows the blues

It’s a part of me now, just like it hardened me then

They say you can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you been so

What you know about the east

I don’t know thing

I was there for 5 months 2 weeks and 3 days, all I know is what I’ve seen

What you know about the east

I’ll tell you what I left behind