Intro
Static on the tape, but the pen still bleeds
Nine years scribbling proof for the ones who need
Turn the page
Verse
Corner store lightbulb flickering slow
Same block, same coat, same wind, same snow
Wrote sixteen bars on a receipt one time
Cashier said "you rap?" I said "nah, I climb"
Every ladder that they built was missing rungs
Had to weld my own steps out of stolen tongues
Static in the notebook, pages soaked in rain
Every drop a memory, every line a stain
Uncle said "you dreaming" while he poured his cup
Told him watch the seeds grow, watch the fence get jumped
Ran the block at midnight, sneakers thin as thread
Filled a hundred pages while the doubters read
Nothing, just silence, just a shrug, a smirk
Now the same mouths asking how the ghost got work
I don't chase the echo, I become the sound
Static clears to signal when the truth gets found
Chorus
They said it wouldn't work, said it wouldn't stick
Notebook full of static, now it's paying quick
Every page a promise that I had to keep
Doubt was just the soil where the proof took seed
Verse
Bus stop bench, I wrote through broken glass
Streetlight buzzing amber like a held-up flask
Cousin pawned his headphones, said "you're wasting ink"
Now he's asking how I built this from the brink
Static was the static of a stalled-out car
Engine coughing embers till it found its spark
Every skeptic's sentence was a verse I stole
Turned their punctuation into paragraphs of gold
Momma kept the pages that I almost tore
Said "the static's just the sound before the roar"
Grinding through December, fingers cracked and raw
Wrote a hundred failures till I wrote the law
Now the block that laughed is bumping what I made
Same mouths that doubted humming every phrase
Static was the tuning, now the station's clear
Every ghost that haunted me is cheering from the rear
Chorus
They said it wouldn't work, said it wouldn't stick
Notebook full of static, now it's paying quick
Every page a promise that I had to keep
Doubt was just the soil where the proof took seed
Bridge
Funny how the silence taught me how to speak
Funny how the coldest winters made the fire keep
I don't need the crowd to tell me who I am
Static was my witness, now the truth's the plan
Every "you'll fail" got folded into fuel
Every closed door taught me how to build my own tool
Outro
Notebook's full, static's gone, signal's clean
Same block watching now, they know just what I mean
Turn the page, close the book, this the proof I bring
Static made the silence learn to sing