Intro
Four a.m., streetlight humming, breath like smoke
Same old jacket, same old hunger, same old road
Young Marlow, yeah, I carry what I'm owed
Verse
Bus stop bench, cardboard cold beneath my knees
Counting cracks in concrete like they're currencies
Mama on the phone saying baby please come home
But home's a hallway where the heat don't ever blow
Nineteen years, I'm sharpening my edges quiet
Diary full of bars nobody bought or bought a riot
Corner store receipts, I'm writing rhymes on the back
Every no I swallowed turned to fuel for the attack
Twelve-hour shifts then I'm ghost into the booth
Sleep is for the settled, I ain't settled, I'm the proof
Watched my uncle chase a dream till the dream chased back
Told me son the weight'll break you or it'll build your stack
So I load it on my shoulders like a duffel full of stone
Every step a little heavier the closer that I'm grown
This the price they never mention when they clock your grind
Weight I carry home, but I carry mine
Chorus
This the weight I carry home
Bricks of doubt turned into stone
Every step I walk alone
Building something I still own
This the weight I carry home
Heavy crown but it's my throne
Watch me turn this dust to gold
This the weight I carry home
Verse
Two years later, different bench, same kind of cold
Studio session paid in favors, no gold
Engineer said run it back, I ran it fifty times
Till the hook was hitting harder than my landlord's signs
Eviction notice folded up inside my coat
Turned the pain to punchlines, turned the lump into a quote
Momma got the callback, better hours, better pay
Still I'm in the trenches writing verses either way
Doubt sit at my table like an uninvited guest
I feed it all my failures, tell it that's the best I got left
But hunger don't retire when the hunger built the man
Every closed door taught my knuckles how to understand
Now the weight got texture, some of it's my team
Cousins on the hook line, chasing the same dream
Heavier but lighter cause we splitting up the load
This the weight I carry, this the weight that built the road
Chorus
This the weight I carry home
Bricks of doubt turned into stone
Every step I walk alone
Building something I still own
This the weight I carry home
Heavy crown but it's my throne
Watch me turn this dust to gold
This the weight I carry home
Bridge
Funny how the heavy load's the one that made me strong
Funny how the empty nights turned into this song
I don't want it lighter, no, I want it understood
Every scar's a signature, every bruise is proof I stood
Outro
So I'm carrying it forward, past the corner, past the pain
Every brick I'm stacking building up a new terrain
This the weight I carry home
And I ain't setting down the stone
