Intro
Yeah... one lamp on, four a.m.
Cold coffee, notebook, pen (Marlow)
Verse
Started in a basement with a fan that never turned,
folding chairs and dollar bills I counted till they burned
holes inside my pockets, watched the ceiling water leak,
sold my winter jacket just to feed the fire I speak.
Bus pass folded twelve times, laminate all cracked,
riding to the studio, a duffel on my back,
Timing every verse to how the streetlights blinked and slept,
I was broke but every promise to myself I kept.
Landlord banging Tuesday, I was tracking through the wall,
mama said believe you, so I answered every call.
Now the same ones ducking texts wanna dap me in the mall,
funny how the tallest shadows come from standing kinda small.
I don't flex a chain, I flex the hours that I stole,
Every sleepless midnight is a coal that fed the gold.
Doubters got a season, but the winter always ends —
so I wrote it in the frost till the frost became my friends.
Chorus
Say my name twice, let it echo down the block,
I put the years in, now the world about to talk.
Say my name twice, watch it ring around the room —
Marlow, Marlow, cold, but I bloomed.
Verse
Twenty-dollar mic and a blanket for the booth,
splicing every take till the silence told the truth.
Sister packing lunches, working doubles at the diner,
tipped me forty bucks, said "go get 'em, you're a fighter."
I don't drop a diamond just to blind you with the shine,
I drop a verse so honest that it lives behind your spine.
Counted every no like a rosary of stone,
turned rejection letters into wallpaper at home.
See the come-up ain't a moment, it's a muscle that you build,
lifting off the mattress every morning unfulfilled.
Now the numbers moving, but I still recall the ache,
first check cleared, I bought my mama's brakes.
Loyalty's a language that the fake ones never learned,
I keep it in the pocket where the diamonds would've burned.
When they ask me was it worth it, all the hunger, all the cold —
I just point up at the marquee glowing gold.
Chorus
Say my name twice, let it echo down the block,
I put the years in, now the world about to talk.
Say my name twice, watch it ring around the room —
Marlow, Marlow, cold, but I bloomed.
Bridge
I don't need 'em to remember, I just need 'em to have heard,
that a kid without a ladder built a staircase out of words.
Every empty room I whispered in eventually would fill —
belief was just a bet I placed and never sold, and never will.
Outro
So say it slow, say it soft, say it loud enough to keep.
I earned the echo, now it follows me to sleep.
Marlow. Marlow.
