Get all 51 Sankofa releases available on Bandcamp and save 10%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Bleeding of the Golden Goose, Kung Fu Buffet, Mystery Album???, 11:59, BLKTCHP3, Iron Kofa Sharp, Invest-Mentality, Multitudes Vol. 1, and 43 more.
1. |
The Uplift
03:44
|
|||
Think of the all things you did to get to where you are
We take for granted all the pieces, paths we wandered far
It’s a given that we find mistakes and magnify them
Isolating ourselves our hell, a saddened island
Don’t those strings pull at your heart man?
Make you want to take on the world with just your own hands
Let the music flood your soul until it takes hold
Overcoming the fear that’s freezing you cold
Evaporating every drop of hope we have held close
Seeking someone else to set it right, nobody else knows
Nobody’s going to help you if you don’t try first
Life can be a struggle tears flooding your eyes hurt
Don’t those strings pull at your heart man?
Make you want to take on the world with just your own hands
Let the music flood your soul until it takes hold
Overcoming the fear that’s freezing you cold
Look, whatever you going to be is who you are
And other answers seem easy cause the truth is hard
We learned to walk, we learned to talk, we learned to interact
Some do better than others, but there’s no stepping back
We’re only here for so long, we’ve got make it count
And when it’s gone we’ll never know we ever touched the ground
No time machine, our children are the bridges made
May you not envision death as sitting at the prison’s gate
Don’t those strings pull at your heart man?
Make you want to take on the world with just your own hands
Let the music flood your soul until it takes hold
Overcoming the fear that’s freezing you cold
Sometimes the hardest thing to speak is the word no
But too many yeses start to lessen your worth, so
Learn to recognize what is going to help you live
Cause that’s what matters, reasons to breathe, and shift
Don’t those strings pull at your heart man?
Make you want to take on the world with just your own hands
Let the music flood your soul until it takes hold
Overcoming the fear that’s freezing you cold
It’s not selfish to take care of yourself first
Look at flight attendants when the oxygen masks drop
Guilt is just an obstacle to drop you a well, hurt
So go ahead...and let that self defeating trash drop
Don’t those strings pull at your heart man?
Make you want to take on the world with just your own hands
Let the music flood your soul until it takes hold
Overcoming the fear that’s freezing you cold
Bad things happen to good people it’s not you
Karma is a trap that only happens after life’s through
Plastering a smile is only going to cause strain
Is there a problem with honesty that got claimed?
Is it fear of being hurt that keeps our wings tucked away
We’d rather shuffle in the gray then live to touch the day
There’s no resuscitating the years that have passed by
And what’s the value of regret replaying all the bad times
Don’t those strings pull at your heart man?
Make you want to take on the world with just your own hands
Let the music flood your soul until it takes hold
Overcoming the fear that’s freezing you cold
Is it weakness that causes me to speak these thoughts aloud?
A reason for feet gliding as my head is lost in clouds
I don’t have time to read between lines so interwoven
I’d rather take a deep breathe inside of winter, frozen
Don’t those strings pull at your heart man?
Make you want to take on the world with just your own hands
Let the music flood your soul until it takes hold
Overcoming the fear that’s freezing you cold
I’ve seen people running around, wearing catcher’s mitts
Hoping feelings rain down from the sky in a blitz
On the other side of the coin are cynics, optimism shrouded
Avoiding the experience of life just like it’s sour
|
||||
2. |
||||
3. |
Tolv
03:27
|
|||
I’ve seen a Jeep Grand Cherokee ablaze
As for shoes, which pair will be my therapy today?
Serenading me with the song of a thousand sirens
Stay positive, found the lining, my thought is a mountain island
Lava droplet showers nightly, behind you can find me writing
Diving deep on a rhyming spree, tonight i’m mightily rhyming
The titan fighting, I see you trying to hide, whiny behind a tiny leaf
But I can spy you easily chief,
leaving your forked tongue juggling teeth, whenever the war drums
Score some, trouble as you struggle to breathe
So yes, the sword swung singing, bringing forth a personalized dirge
The versatile person despised first, payback working on my nerves
Purplish light blurs disguising needles, cerebral incarnate
Stephen’s starting deeply evil procedures of carnage,
the charming beast in the market, leaving meager cheaters are tarnished
No need to even start it, so please breathe, and seek retreat regardless
Here’s the world’s smallest violin, got you hanging by a limb
Of your bonsai family tree, the trying times begin
It’s not a minor whim, it’s more a tidal behavioral wave
Vinyl plates creating razor slicing bladed brigades
Hiding my trident inside the tightest rhymes that i’m writing
3 foot high and i’m rising, the highest heights I’m a’climbing
Combine with the mightiest, J. Dank and San your midas finalists
Pariah highnesses providing reasons for suicidal cats to find the why to live
Passersby admire but we’re keeping deep within the mire, at work, survivalists
I’m the rattlesnake who slithers in the fragile cavalcade
Grab a crate and take a record making magic, happen great
Scraping classics from the scraps that many left abandoned
So we pay attention, taking care until we heft an anthem
Ant labor the plans made to expand greater
So voyage 83 miles and get a translator
Got me waiting on the rapture like Debbie Harry career day
Then I’ll move along without the menace of these ear aches
These thoughts of mine are laser guided, shining from a mesa, highest
Might have been a state of mind that’s liable to create a crisis
Invasive virus is created, can’t contain it in the slightest
Even basements won’t keep you safe when the phrase is flying
So duck and cover from the blunderbuss with shrapnel screaming
Running on fumes without the ride to put some gasoline in
No passive scheming, we’re making plans to surpass your idols
I’m D’Onofrio in Salton Sea you’re half a rhino
My cauldron is scalding scoundrels, bubbling bone marrow
The trouble bringer with a quiver full of drone arrows
Tracking down with rapid navigational maps to blaze in a batch
Face it, no escaping this wrath
Releasing rats infected with contagions percolating in vat
Side effects ranging from fatal to uranium baths
|
||||
4. |
Hide it Away
03:34
|
|||
Betting on myself’s the only gamble i’ll make
Look man, I understand that i’m great
The hand that is dealt is something I play with
The tools of the trade help create the greatness
I look better in the mirror than I do in photographs
self-esteem healthy? Check, yep., I know the maps
Took years to get to the point of not lending credence
To people I didn’t care for, Stephen
Stephen RhymeWise is telling me i’m too blunt
May hurt somebody’s feelings with this huge tongue
So I tend not to speak unless I’m spoken to
Happily invisible and not making them miserable
When I begin to speak, case of the floodgates
Cause everybody’s going have sets of tough days
best to simply listen, for the chance to learn
I know how my voice sounds, so expand the term
My apologies, you’re caught up in a storm of my words
And I didn’t mean to drown you, but I see you submerged
Nearly 45 still learning to have a conversation
I stepped on your thought, your turns i have taken
I’m chomping at the bit to launch my thoughts without a hitch
And often monstrously awkward oh how awful that it is
But the crazy part is that I see it worse than it was
Hindsight’s hair vest, lurching in fuzz
A permanent stub of the toe lodged between my teeth
Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, I’m the meanest beast
I can’t really tell when it’s time to find the end of my words
And i hope that get too badly on your nerves
I’m observant until participating
At which point all perspective goes out the window and my glimpse is fading
So it’s probably easier to let me scribble thoughts on envelopes
Then strike up conversations with that tall fellow, awful close
I guess I’m just accustomed to head in the clouds
If you happen to be flying, I’ll welcome the company (humbly) now
I’ll be humbly mumbling, talking to myself with lips still
With the exception of my tapping foot, I’ll probably sit chill
Sometimes it’d be easier if I didn’t care for words so much
But it’s too late, so now I work them thus
Almost worship, within an interia as I nurse the verses
And my signature is the only time i’m working cursive
Surfaces scratched, serpents turn intro track
Evaporated time, inspiration’s worth is a trap
And I didn’t exactly require encouragement to continue
But thanks for the thoughts and props, I will binge though
What’s dope now is living in phones is so acceptable
That I can write raps and pretend that I am texting dudes
But I do miss the way ink dries on the page
So I take this little addiction and I hide it away
|
||||
5. |
||||
Morning, i woke up on the wrong side of the bed
Smashed the bed to smithereens, i’ll try the floor instead
I’ve got to summon the new groove, coming to do damage
102 Magnets dagnammit a classic, bumping it through traffic
Produce facets to fascinate all the listeners
The team at Bravas making major flavor for the slickest urge
Shout to Tom Francis, JON?DOE the raw rapping
Friend of mine who thinks in similar ways, fillet the prawn sandwich
I’m a bazooka launching Luca Doncic
Got you losing consciousness, step back, bury the dagger, slang apocalypse
My fangs are made of obelisks, dripping magma vomited
But time to chill on all the illest of my accomplishments
I got a high five from the hand of Lazarus
As for better dap than that, I can’t imagine it
Hold up, got a song, with a burger that’s named after it
Even Kash would have to admit, maaan, that’s legit
The dig find listen sample isn’t complete
Unless it’s followed by the legendary chop and repeat,
A dusty fingered organism guiding the right path
Even Preem wants to go and sample the fly stash
I see people pressing luck and trying to turn it into diamonds
As if luck would ever change by simply putting shine in
Got the pen of a ghostwriter, wandering through haunted pages
Exploring every crooked angle in this house of mazes
I weave words majestically, happily make a tapestry
Evaporate a mediocre rapper for my apertif
This banger here has been certified as hazardous
Emerge from shrines, miraculous with myrrh provided labyrinths
I’m strolling streets holding heat in the form of pen and paper
My footfalls provide the rhythm of this ventilator
The orchestral restaurant the rest are left to stress upon
So bet the rest to guess are wrong and yet my rep is never gone
A fresh beat is my cranium, engulfed in flames
Then my tongue becomes a lever to catapult my brain
A raw classic with a cult parade
The audacity to dastardly dash past the fray
The dig find listen sample isn’t complete
Unless it’s followed by the legendary chop and repeat,
A dusty fingered organism guiding the right path
Even Preem wants to go and sample the fly stash
D is for the dinosaurs steady dusty in the crates
I is for invention and the mothers that it takes
G is for the greatness when all the pieces connect
F, the fruits of flavorful labor keeping it fresh
I, for intiutively, navigating the path
N’s for nobody else knowing where you found that stash
Next D is for the discipline it takes to make this
L, is for what’s given to those who stay asleep
Third eye is for intelligence intersecting with greatness
ST’s for Mike Muir cause impressions are deep
EN cylopedic awareness of every SAMPLEd snare
CHOP shop of musical mastery hands in the air
Are each of you prepared to proceed with dopeness
PE for Public Enemy, bringing truth to focus
A is for again adventuring with the craft
So cop a T or hat from my man and make it last
|
||||
6. |
Neon Dimensions
03:16
|
|||
No one deserves to see me going bezerk
So immature with the words that I have chosen to chirp
Choke on the girth of my vocab, you’re provoking the worst
Motion adjourned cause my judgement is atrocious for sure
Your focus is hopeless and blurred
Turn away from the explosive opus, open to burn
I’m home alone with the motive to be better than the previous me
Not photogenic
Go ahead and let the scenery speak immediately
No genie here is needing to teethe
Reconvening with a media team, the greediest needs
Inebriated with a sleazier creed
Recreated havoc that we wreaked lesions, leaking, the knees
The speed demon keeping at it, it’s my reason to breathe
40 thieves and a preacher redeemed, no beef seen in this theme
No adidas allegiance, it’s a B with the izness
not a brand man I’m a sickness
That’s not what they need, excess eff a subsist
Milk the cash cow dry until its pink blood drips
What’s this? a consumer recognizing his status
Shoes are added and added and added
To what end, time periods become ellipses
Lined up my kicks from Fort Wayne to Poughkepsie
We’ve got, no other options and act like it’s awesome magic
losing more ground now it’s getting problematic
We need sufficient dirt to go and hide our heads in
Treating happy face stickers like they’re not another death grin
Let’s swim in the biological waste and pretend
That keeping our heads above it all is going to help us reach the end
Disbelief suspended just to keep on spending, visa credit
Joneses reach them, better ownership of elitist measure
bonus of loneliest holding items for the sake of stature
Screaming for attention with subtlety just in case it matters
Rise and shine as I awaken
Deep inside of an iron maiden
Violated the pact I made to keep it light and life-related
Unless of course, the light has faded
In which case, it’s time to find the pilot with a long match
And strike it like I’m waging
War against officials who are killing public schools
Billionaires chasing more money, grubbing ghouls
Voucher vampires and the charter starter celebs
Not fighting only makes me part of this mess
So if you send your kid to a private spot
Just know you’re stopping neighbor kids from climbing higher, and it’s time to stop
We won’t raise taxes, rob peter to pay the apostle paul
And use you to kill public schools, having a ball
Pay teachers, why would a corporation do that?
Change the company name and then they can’t do jack
Paying all the lobbyists, the posse is tough
Backpack full of cash, bop, watching them strut
|
||||
7. |
Bernard King
03:27
|
|||
My state of mind has metastasized
13 to 50, even got Alaska, right?
Then nabbed Hawaii for the territoriality
Then snagged Aurora Borealis to max the malady
My rap’s an actuality on tracks with a pal or three
Dual citizenship, my nationality
Used to live by the Castle Gallery, but no more
Now the ‘07 is embedded in my folklore
Horses? Better hold yours, I don’t have the reigns man
Alton Lister Blister prominent upon my brain scan
The goblin in a van, bumping beats from the underneath
Bite my rhymes? That’s going to put you back 100 teeth
Your boss succumbs to 1s and 3s, I skipped the 2s and 4s
Superhuman troubadour, (dude) who can move them more?
I found the apple of your eye and chewed it to the core
And that’s just mean man, you don’t want to do this war
The stripes of adidas plus Gilbert Arenas
Patrick Ewing minus John Starks, do you see this?
Dennis Rodman plus Allen Houston with his sweet kicks
Harboring the math for Bernard King, believe it
Step back, tighten right and left straps on your flyest jetpack
It’s fine advice, so get that, ‘for I arrive and wreck tracks
Slap happy epidemic repping many years plus
All of the friends made, lifting peers thus
It appears we’re up to whatever we seek
The sickness is sinister, guess you’d better retreat
Sip or slurp your Fiji, I’m drinking from the faucet
Piloting the flight to break the barriers of conscience
Threw caution to the wind and it shifted and came back at me
Now i’m stuck with a gasface, trap travesty
The last boss to slap box with the hand of fate
A cast off with the mask, lost, no plan is fake
Command breaks, from Mandalay to the land of lakes
Shout out to dusty digger dynasties who cram the crates
No can of spam of candygram, this type of dope just can’t be planned
….Heightened focus with the family man
I’d rather eat a mouthful of touched by dirty hand Cheetos than Bandidos
You’d sooner see San in Speedos, so bland and weak though
command a land of tree folk, forget an ego, just go for what where your needs go
Be-trothed to the beat with these flows intervening with fire words
pull from deep within, baptizing the entire earth
I admire work in many forms and mediums
The core is craftsmanship, no haphazard disobedience
So listen solicit ingredients from the passionate
Find your realm, learn the ways of an inhabitant
The overnight sensation whose tracking number was misplaced
Laughing amongst the scraped away debris in this brisk race
In which case we snik days away with switchblades
Saliva survivalists sliding inside of a slick cage
The crow doesn’t fly to quick pays, papercuts and wrist sprains
betrayed in sludge, made enough and thus the wish fades
|
||||
8. |
Verse World Problems
03:46
|
|||
I don’t have favorite rappers, I’ve got friends that are dope
Sensitive folk presented in a mention is nope
Besides, cats these days seem to have the flavor backwards
Rocking shoes with mouthguards, the vapormaxes
Already rock a guard cause nightly I’m grinding
and the high price point isn’t going to entice me
Plus this rock called home is pretty comfortable
Long as I’ve got beats, paper and pen that is functional
And I seek greater ways to say what I reflect upon
I wouldn’t mind being on an MC Escher echelon
I’ve got a dream job that lets me hold funds
So I’ll never Rakim with a promo for gold fronts
That feeling when your hero turns out to be a trope
With an IG feed of inspirational quotes
Not everyone can tell tales like Dante Ross does
The skill to put you right there in the midst of hip hop stuff
I’ve got seven pieces of rap-covered paper in my pocket
That doesn’t include the sardine pack with raps on it
I write new raps instead of using the old ones
A security blanket made of paper’s gotta be my whole sum
Rest in peace to Nick Fabini’s Honda, not a Mitsubishi
River greenway stays dripping the slick graffiti
I found Astroworld in MSG’s driveway
No bootleg Mankinds supplying fly days
So if you’re catching my drift, my rap, it is slick
I’m BA Baracus slapping with a random assist
Miraculously ravenous, I’m bragging a bit
Shout to Nigel, floating up with Nasa in ships
No need to even ask about a passenger list
I’m laughing to live, trouble’s just a matter of blips
When it appears, I’m going full force, no holding back
Penning the coldest raps from back alleys to the culdesacs
When you try to write just one verse
Then along comes another and makes it all worse
Next thing you know you’ve got a hook to write
Cause that’s another new song and it’s looking like
That track invited a friend along for the ride
And this beat just arrived and it fits just right
The deft, fractured shots, taken by trespassers
None other than 11s and the rest step after
The breath captured in masks keeps more than hope alive
Pipes broken, dry, puddles from a soaking sky
Eyes opened wide
thought provoking images, broken windows and sediment
A land the betterment seeking gentlemen had then jettisoned
Indebted to reticent architects who hefted breath to shift
Once unified reduced to separate, no longer residents
severing resonance no resurrecting the desolate
Death the definite whispers echoing among the emptiness
The ghosts succumb to weariness loneliness invisible tears
From then to now? near infinite miserable years
Inadmissable fears, dental chairs swivel in gears
Masterpiece plaster cracks black ripples appear
Could it all be so simple with a frivolous sneer
Could it all be so simple with a frivolous sneer
Issues of abandonment, the vision is clear
|
||||
9. |
||||
(Sankofa)
sky's the limit for cowards hiding inside of cynics
Cause life is nothing if you never even try to live it
I see you walking cockily into my posse's dojo
Next second, wheeled out, the second son of Quasimodo
My rap, a boa constrictor with Krakatoa scripture
Trafficking in language so graphic it doesn't need a picture
Extracting oxygen from your air quotes, don't dare go
Where we've been we squeeze limbs and scare folks, the heir's toast
|
||||
10. |
Thanks, I'm Dope
04:08
|
|||
So go ahead and start to try
My rap is a carving knife leaving you carmelized
In your pair of karl kanis
You don’t want to spar with my spartacus rhymes
Leaving you trapped in some dark confines
Take some words, marking mine for a suitable goal
Unfurled from a scroll, beautiful for dudes to behold
Remove the control from the equation, you have none
And i’ll write the truth until about when Walter’s nap’s done
Lights camera action packed in a path of pathogen raps
Laughing at the wack, stacked on a marble slab in the back
Sitting back, inhabit the track,until my voice finds the right spots
Comfy and cozy, provider of fly thoughts
Why not, go on a stroll and discover what appears
Maybe something here of this can find about a hundred ears
That’d be dope, kind of gramaticly magical plus
Making me emphatically stoked, crushing data to dust
Stamina, adding it up to make the abacus click
The pattern is plush plus miraculous scripts
Are what I write and the mic is my klaxon
I even know a kid by the name of Zaxxon
Thanks, I’m dope. Yep, you’re right
Me on stage, what an unexpected sight
I work hard at this and I’m glad that you’re here
Now you found some hidden treasure with the whitest beard
I suspend poetic licenses in carbonite
Phonemic menace with the medicine to spark insight
It’s hard to find sufficient chunks of life to do it all
So i fit it in when possible, and drop in with a groove to thrall
You can call me by my given name when I don’t rap
And that’s most of the time I’m around, oh snap
I know a dude named Kovax who’s so dope that it inspires me
To try a little harder to get a bit better with rhyming sprees
Honestly, I can’t compete with it, but the dude’s dope
So respect due to the karate chopping hair Cousteau
To and fro you can sway to the tracks when I’m playing the Rail
And shake my hand after the set, maybe tell me a tale
Stories are fascinating, I’d rather hear yours though
Plus my voice is probably shot like death metal, but moreso
Maybe I can tap my mason jar in morse code
So you saw Kevin Sorbo at the record store bro...tell me more
Welcome to the braggadojo, got more belts than Adrian Peterson’s kid
But I don’t cosign all the meanness he did
Indeed, my treatise is treating people to speak on their feelings and live
No bulimia skits, believe me life is full enough of all its challenges
And even a paladin with pals is only so talented
I’m prowling in a fountain for Scrooge McDuck’s lucky dime
maybe it’s my pair of shoes I can’t quite find
We each have our riches and superstitious itches
With urges for more when the need is fictitious
Arthur’s going to have the illest kicks in existence
When his feet are big enough to fit within the slickness
Only a matter of time, little giant grows fast
Maybe he can join me, running on the Towpath
Fort Wayne Trails are the dopeness, man you know that
And if not, get on out there, get your own facts
This is where Rhymefest would probably say mopad
Just ask my bro Kash if you doubt the flow math
And that’s Kashal-Tee from Bice Corve
Bitten twice by Eminem, but never shy in a mic war, my Lord
|
Sankofa Fort Wayne
My rhymes kick in like a turbobooster.
Fort Wayne.
Streaming and Download help
Sankofa recommends:
If you like Sankofa, you may also like: