Well, the cops been on your ass Thinkin’ you’re some kind of crook Fly girls out on the sidewalk Never calling your numbers they took It’s a day of disgrace And here comes the hook You’re drunk as a skunk and you act like a schnook The streets got your number, man, So you’d best go to ground You and the boys are beatmakin’ And you just can’t find the sound [Chorus] It’s a Friday of sorrow All the girls have let us down It’s a Friday of sorrow Joe Blow is a sucker M.C. And you work hard (so hard) Just to make it to the weekend And when it comes around at last, You still feel so stricken Because love (oh, love) Has passed you by And though you’re hangin’ out with the homeboys You don’t want ‘em to see you cry (Can’t let ‘em see the tears in your eyes) [Chorus] It’s a Friday of sorrow All the girls have let us down It’s a Friday of sorrow Joe Blow is a sucker M.C.

​​Wicked in the year of the pig, when I came to earth In the hell of the Vietnam era like an airburst Blowing up, flowing like the stratospheric jetstream gets mean Daddy in his blue jeans, mama with a gangster lean And a fly routine I got cut, I went nuts, eatin’ cigarette butts and ice cream Such was my dream And it came to be that little old me could engage with reality I had subjectivity Coupled with a mind that could fast-rhyme into infamy That was it for me All I needed was a m-i-c and a beat like a seismic DJ I'm'a count to three Bestride the narrow world like Colossus Boxed out, preposterous, me my boys and us Coveted like a royal flush was the cold we crushed Hey, you smoking mother nature, I got you sussed Riding into town bringing downtown southbound Listen up, Danny Boy, this is what they call a showdown I didn't never had a chance to blink before the darkness flooded over me like a India ink Floating face down in the drink Thinking when I’m gonna sink like I never was a fink Never was a caveman stinking like a missing link Atavistic in the misting pink And love stinks And my brain is just static generation, tuned to a dead station Body is a live wire, but mind is on vacation Tell me where to stand for my ovation [Chorus] I am a rock-hard trooper to the bone (The Year of the Pig) The brass said, me and Peter Graff, said would would never last, nevermore set our little asses in the same class But we lads had a blast while it lasted Spazzin’ at the other brats we lambasted The bottom fell out, the ground beneath me shifted Only two dimes I could rub together was what I grifted And I still persisted Couldn't quit. I was young, insane and gifted. Next stop the Bronx, and I bricked it, whiffed it Solid, never met a wallet that I couldn’t lift it And I set sail in the Blue Whale, rollin’ in the tail with my frail And the Cup brothers hot on my trail They’re pulling on my suit lapel Saying, “Why’d you bring along that female?” Didn’t have nothing but a tale to tell But I told it well And the rhymes that I wrote back then had begun to gel They had me fitted for a padded cell Walking round in a magic spell, I was a classic swell I looked fine but inside my mind I was in Seventh Hell Standing in the rut of a runaway dump truck And I knew right then I was bucked, outta luck and thunderstruck The Year of the Pig, it was gone and forgotten now I would have run but I’d forgotten how It was somehow altogether rotten now And my brain said, “Laughing Boy, I got you now” [Chorus] I am a rock-hard trooper to the bone (The Year of the Pig)

In the East, they call me the Crocodile Man I offend like the blending sands of Tajikistan I once knew a cat called Gumboo Patel, A gentleman I met in a Burmese cell And he sold me a pair of royal blue kicks And he told me to swear by the loyal true Styx That I’d never stop rippin’ fresh rhymes to the bass And skippin’ on the beat like a stone on the water’s face The provocative rock steady, percussing the clock Shot blocking, evocative, timed and tick-talkative Bollocks I give, but don’t never receive in kind Rising from the stone-cold slab like the monster of Frankenstein So partake of this wine Living on the turn of a dime Somebody’s ass on the line Like a candle, they shine Can’t handle the life of vampirin’ Still my ass can try, but it’s tirin’ (Where the hell is my dog Lord Byron?) Information in entropy Why the hell don’t somebody send for me? Kid’s algorithms lick schismatically drastic, you spastic A palace of stochastic topaz A castle on sacred land And this ain’t goin’ nothin’ like the way I planned I had a jam but it done slipped out of my hand So Satanic, you can call me Mr. Flagg, Randall, That peripatetic man from The Stand I got Zoloft, Abilify, amphetamine salts, Trintellix. I sleep on the Trazodone, Mixed with no Skrillex. I’m dealing with this daily They railroad and jail me A little bit of a whale, you see I go chop-chop Makin’ a living by takin’ and giving the props Not not I’m straight to the top of the pops A true newly-deputized stand-up guy My crew rugged in Chi, and like fraternally wise You won’t be catchin’ any pop-up flies. And then you want to know why? Because you still got the moons of Saturn in your eyes And that’s got you hypnotized And I’m not surprised In the East, they call me the Crocodile Man I offend like the blendin’ sands of Tajikistan

Oh, these are the times that try men’s souls What dire offense from amorous causes springs What mighty contests rise from trivial things Trivial things Shorty! [Chorus] When we come through, trouble on our minds Doin’ kung fu, doubled on the down rhymes We succumb to the viciousness of our times You too young to appreciate what makes the finer things fine When the verse hits, the earth splits The reason being seemingly these ain’t even the worst bits Spittin’ on a fire, criticality/desire, but the wire’s hot And a liar’s not a liar if you know the shot Drop Stop and roll We inspire with the money/steady rock and southern-fried soul Back to star jammin’, slammin’ shots at the bar, mannin’ up Bein’ roughly who you are, baby, that could be enough Callin’ up, ballin’ it up, wit’ bucolic alcoholics, all vocalic With vocoder, we reversing gravity and falling up It’s a tragedy how taller people get to dunk, I wish I was a little bit less drunk, some old imitation Jackson Pollack callin’ me a punk The evil that men do lives after them The good is oft interred with their bones [Chorus] When we come through, trouble on our minds Doin’ kung fu, doubled on the down rhymes We succumb to the viciousness of our times You too young to appreciate what makes the finer things fine I got scars on my knuckles, lone stars on my buckles When I’m truculent I do the huckle-buckle (I’m a juggernaut) Never in the rain caught, I’m never not sauced like a fighter with a right cross, a fat-cat chat bot, that slot is taken by a fat knot, jackpot Crackin’ like a hacker on slashdot, I’m not No, I’m not loose I be tighter than the Gordian Mirror up to nature like my man Richard Rorty, and Thoughts are mechanical, computers do philosophy Thetawaves are turbulent with cognitive velocity Limits of my language are the limits of my world Smiley faces? What are you, a nine-year-old girl? I can step like Ginobili, handle the basketball Lift the boogie-down mic up two hundred stories tall Oh, these are the times that try men’s souls What dire offense from amorous causes springs What mighty contests rise from trivial things Trivial things

I am no man. I am dynamite. First of the worst, when I burst, Like an existential threat you can light like a cigarette Sweating in the bed from my dreadfully fretting wet head The best, lest you forget, Let's get after it! Regrets get shredded like canceled checks Upset? Yup, bet. Constructed and chucked in, and bucked like the Bucks in Milwaukee, And yes, I’m a freak, but I’m not an athletic adonis Or god like Giannis, my game is not Antetokounmpo’s, I’m hamstrung and slow But at least I’m no dumbo like Trump, though. America, you better dump him Before it strikes twelve and his ass turns into a pumpkin. Oh, shit, it’s too late, Jim, just take another look at him, the sucker’s a tangerine His face is as red as my hair was when I was 13. And the case may be lean, But I think he mighty moonlight and fight for the Putin regime But enough of political themes, I disdain and despise machinations and schemes I scream above necessary evils like Evel Knievel, and sometimes I tumble and fall And break every bone in my body. It’s odd, like I’d chop you but don’t know karate I’m old and I’m stodgy, I can’t touch my toes, my knee hurts when it’s cold Or it’s fixing to rain, and my brain is on fire, just look at me, can’t you see I am in pain? Does it matter? Can rappers admit they have weaknesses? Speak to this. Why is my heel like Achilles’? Riddle me this, as my man MCA said Why am I called a fatality, pal? ‘Cause it’s not ‘cause I’m dead, bitch. Baby, I ain’t dead yet Why? ‘Cause I am the man from space Facing this place of disgrace with my space suitcase Rhythms splitting in schism into an intricate prism Dismissing your mysticisms, ain’t even interested in ‘em Wittier than you can spit, a flick of the wrist and you missed ‘em Grittier plays like glittering rays fit in your system Contrary to popular belief, and with that I can rap like a drummer tattoo, get into a spat Am I going too fast? Is my message getting lost in the interstellar static? Remember that I’m coming from the second dimension It’s flatter than your mater in the Latin declension I been traveling here and battling across a thousand light years And you’re gonna stand there and offer me lite beer? I’m here to confirm your worst fears of reptilian overlords Rednecks taken in space pods, with cattle prods violated. What were the odds? I came with a mod squad, If power corrupts absolutely, then you better shoot me Computers with juice, they induce me to multiply fruitfully Truthfully, this is a lie, Paradoxically rocking, and trying to spark me But like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target You can’t track me, you can’t know both my hip-hop spot and velocity Protect against thermal breakdown and viscosity, That’s my philosophy Why? ‘Cause I am the man from space Facing this place of disgrace with my space suitcase

Ignorance is strength I’m begging you to tell me what to think I don’t want to say the wrong thing I don’t want to wander off the reservation Leave my station, draw attention, face the nation Stand here naked, unawakened, overeducated Hide me in the crowd, give me orders, give me back the script I can still remember certain things, I’m sure of it The limits of my language are the limits of my world I don’t need no lexicon, I’ll use smiley faces, never words Shut my eyes, I don’t need to see, you can tell me what is there Tell me who to follow, who to hate, I won’t challenge you, I wouldn’t dare Lock me up for my protection, watch me closely, do inspections Let me feel the edge to correct me and my insurrections I don’t want to walk in the sun, don’t want to run, don’t want to be out in the cold Tell me what to stand, what sign I’m supposed to hold Tell me what to scream, tell me who’s been canceled, never why I’ll denounce him, pounce upon him, lemme trounce him, let me at the guy Did I say I? There is no I. There is only us. Unleash us. Be the boot that stamps our human faces in the dust I guess somebody died and made you the gatekeeper for my mind Whining’s fine, but the one-eyed man’s the only king you’ll find in the land of the blind I’m a heterodox thinker, a bourbon-on-the-rocks drinker, Reading what I want to read, it’s a right I’ll bleed for, the only kind of right I got a need for I have seen the enemy, and he’s a teenaged scold and a Big Brother wannabe He thinks he can tell me what to do or say or see He thinks he can frighten me, try me, deny me clemency We shall see. An eternity will pass before I pass up an opportunity to be What it is my right to be, not a number but a free man, despite your plan If I got to go down, let it be my my own hand I’m not your fan, your follower, your disciple or your man I’m just the Laughing Boy, emcee of this theater of the damned

The atomic facts, when they swung like drumsticks that crash on a hi-hat Or when they fall flat like they cocked back and get smacked and cracked on a track like aluminum bats Or skillfully duly arranged in polemics that’ll crush in a nucleated bum’s rush To cut you subtle, redoubling the trouble, a razor blade in the stump of a toothbrush I flare a sneer that scares the fear out your heart, your mind, your lying eyes and ears You stutter and falter, you fall, but I’m here and I hear you loud and clear And the word on the street is you’re nothing but a nerd with a beat I repeat, are you deaf? You’re a poindexter with bum hip flexor, complete Don’t tell me you’re blessed. I profess to possess not a speck of respect for your weak superstitious ideals The world is everything that is the case The facts arranged in logical space I’m a Jersey-born New Yorker Texan. When I’m stressed and messed with best believe I’m flexing My expressed beliefs admit of no correction When you open up your mouth to speak you waste your breath; your rhymes is absent of significance And hence, my motherfucking friends, it ain’t nothing going on here but the motherfucking rent And now the suckers wonder where the motherfuck the Laughing Boy has went But here I am, surprised to find how utterly insanely you’ve gone mental The thought is the significant proposition That’s wisdom. Call it what the fuck you will, since Eric and Parish said you gots to chill And chill you will, I run drum fills, I crush my pills and snort ‘em up through hundred dollar bills CHORUS Whereof we cannot speak Thereof we must be silent The Atomic Facts Whereof we cannot speak Thereof we must be silent The Atomic Facts Cut the track, hustlin’ back the radicalist baddest ever Orchestrator or crusader thunder cat that you can ever fire the fucking flack at, daddy mack Muscle wins, when the thinking of a rational animal Can strain explaining why it ever slack and why it must be lacking Fuck that, this is game seven at the Garden To blocking your shot like Ginobili did to Harden A picture of reality unfadable, instability being the quality of being unstable A battle fought in the breezeway, you sees it, it lines up as tees and effs in a truth table Breaking you up like the pool hall rack can scatter and clack like some playground jacks And you better bet on this, my pack: we bringin’ ‘em back, the atomic facts CHORUS Whereof we cannot speak Thereof we must be silent The Atomic Facts Whereof we cannot speak Thereof we must be silent The Atomic Facts

Back then, I resolved back then to get over on the world. I made up my mind I was gonna be a hustler. I was hanging in the pool hall, making small bets to cover lunch money and train fare back to the suburbs. School had me on probation, my family rented rooms out by the week and went to the food kitchen for donations. Slowly, it became apparent that the world was getting over on me. This one time I had to go to jail And they called me that organelle, that one that’s the powerhouse of the cell (mitochondrion) They say do one thing and do it well But these silly-ditty riddle rhymers flew too close to the sun and then they fell, oh, how they fell and fell and they fell Put ‘em up for the percolating prodigies, the untrained unsung musical herculeses, The horny little corner kids teasing their main squeezes, the player everybody called the Black Jesus Tell me you believe in this, tell me you can grieve with us when we receive the steamy fever that is indeed with us Tell me it’s ingenious, tell me why it cleaves to us, why it always and ever did mean this much to us I rip through ‘em like Westbrook I fuck around and knock ‘em out like a left hook I snooker the bookmakers, leaving the motherfuckers shook, like breakin’ they hearts when I’m cookin’’em up and I’m servin’ ‘em , baby, the shit’ is just textbook Cutting hard to the dime might get you the best look, instead of standing there having to take what the rest took I remember drinking Budweiser underneath the Broadway Bridge, flowing with the Harlem River by, sir Spitting like the devil but the Spuyten Duyvil was a whirlpool, fool, it was not a geyser I don’t got no need for the spin. When I switched to gin I was half a pint in the pocket and three sheets to the wind And when I lost a race to three for five I was all in. That meant losing a fin. That’d make me mad as sin. Not Unger, and sometimes it make you wonder where the hell a little broke sixteen got a five his ass could put on the line Inside he was dying, thinking he was more shinier than a dime, more fly than chilled fine wine I guess you could call that a hell of a time, when the wisdom of a young man’s life starts to ring like a bell or a chime And every part of the atmosphere, and everything I got through that year ground me up in its gears, I was shot through with fear I poured out that beer But why I did, well, it still isn’t clear A sucker think he good A sucker think he good Everybody would if he could but he can’t and he’ll never find his damn way out of the neighborhood Business bad? "Fuck you, pay me." Oh, you had a fire? "Fuck you, pay me." Place got hit by lightning, huh? "Fuck you, pay me Had a slippery pool cue? Fuck you. Pay me. Got a paper in school due? Fuck you. Pay me. Oh your girl and your best friend fooled you? Fuck you, pay me.

Sometimes our darkest years contain our finest moments And those were days of pain But they were more than just torments Indeed, we were fortunate To share that hour of love It would be importunate To care about the showers above It’s a Friday of joy At the Raccoon Lodge With the No School On Friday Club And everybody’s here Lance Fever, Joe Blow and Iron Mike Lefty Leb, Laverne and Shirley, Spermily and your mom, DJ Saturn, DJ Buzz and the Jerm, Blacktongue Baby, It’s a golden day full of sunshine and malt liquor We start out pretty early Somebody could get sick We got our story time We got Colt 45s We got this old piano and our freestyle rhymes We got no mortgages We got no kids or wives We ain’t got a hell of a lot Except the rest of our lives It’s a Friday of joy Come on, girls Come on over to the Raccoon Lodge I’m writin’ a tale for you In pen and ink Be sure to bring something with you Something to drink These are the days we’ll never forget Though there are some we might yet live to regret We won’t all be friends forever. But what the hell did you expect? These magic Fridays of power and animosity It’s a Friday of joy Come on, girls Bring your ass on, and get some of this We’re having a good time And we’re fixin’ to get real drunk today We’ll get drunk tomorrow, too It sounds like fun, doesn’t it? I wonder what we’ll do to you It’s a Friday of joy

Because I rock steady As the broadsides roar Seen an MC stowing a whore, flung him by the board It came on a blow, I defied the waves to crash By the naval traditions of rum, sodomy, and the lash So kiss my full-grown ass And reef the topgallant sheets I tell a North Sea Story over pirated beats Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink. I was below, feeling pitiful low, when the lookout cried, “Sail ahoy!” and the hands came alive It was the Constitution out of Boston, there on the full tide A lawful prize. How I longed to wipe that ship of the line’s eye!. She tried to fly, upon my sacred word of honor, But we had the faster hull and the weather gauge on her We drew up on her leeward side, fired a blast Dismasted and boarded her, called out, “Hold fast!” My head wasn’t right, I’d ate a fistful of uppers Many a man’s blood swirled off through the scuppers Her captain had the honor to present me his cutlass But I strung up that sucker MC from the foretopmast I’m a stalwart old salt, my beard is flecked with white And I can chase you ‘round the flames of perdition by moonlight I’d give my good right hand for a band of able seamen ‘Stead of this passel of SoundCloud rappers I been leading Ancient I be, a crisscross of scars tells my tale A predatory derelict, a relic from the age of sail Handsomely there by that taffrail, you scurvy dog Don’t give me a reason to cut you off your grog Clear for action! We shall beat to quarters! I got sharpshooters up in the tops to snipe the boarders The sea is up, and the waves creaming over the stern Our only mission is to capture, sink, or burn If you see our frigate upon the next sun’s rising Or spot us hull up on yonder Western horizon You’re faced with a mariner who steers by the stars And there’ll be the devil to pay when I cut your spars 'God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends that plague thee thus!— Why look'st thou so?'—With my crossbow I shot that albatross.