Yo, why is the Ripper so ill? //
That would be an unpardonable breech of confidence for me to reveal //
He said, “One of these days all eyes will be on me //
When they look up in the sky and see the neon ‘C’ //
Rhymes inscribed on a nickel disk encased in a glass with an ion beam for longevity //
For more than ten centuries, impressions and memories //
The first time-machine inventor will mention me //
Canibus was a visionary indeed //
He believed light could travel in multiples of c //
The organic supercomputer that solved the mysteries of Klein-Kaluza with two blue metric rulers //
Liked Cool J but thought Steven Jay Gould was cooler //
And he never liked to propagate rumors //
Smoked Canary Island cigars //
Liked American luxury cars and beautiful Asian broads //
He had a strong mind //
He used to philosophize about rhymes while he was pruning his bonsais //
He claimed that he had written the greatest rhyme of all time //
But he would never take it out of his archives //
He wrote two songs per day //
And was constantly experimenting with his wordplay //
In his youth he did a report on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey //
He got a ‘F’ but he deserved an ‘A’ //
I followed his career from the first day //
It seemed the lack of support contributed to his inert ways //
I’ve seen him put in twenty-four hour workdays //
With deferred pay, undeterred by the worst shame //
Public humiliation was the worst pain //
He was spinning out of control like a class five hurricane //
He said he wouldn’t want another emcee to suffer the same //
Especially when there’s nothing to gain //
He was the illest alive but nobody would face it //
He spit ‘til his tongue was too torched to taste it //
Properly funded corporations Carbon-dated his latest creations //
To extract the information, they found it utterly amazing //
They claimed the body of his work was the same thing as a priceless painting //
Never mattered to him the art galleries hated him //
Cause Thomas Kinkade called and said he would take ten //
Complete enigmas wrapped in puzzles encrypted in language //
With sound but without shape or signature //
Kept files in his garage on MS-DOS in a fireproof pod, we thought it was odd //
Outside there was a she'd with an Oppenheimer lock //
He apparently kept more wax than Madame Tussaud //
We were in total awe cause it blew our minds //
So many rhymes that were intricately designed //
He WAS poet laureate of his time //
And if you don’t mind I’d like to share some of his rhymes //
Alone in my room looking through the thirty-two X telescope zoom //
Adjusting the focus of the moon //
One should not assume the philosophy of David Hume is nothing more than a subjective conclusion //
What is the maximum field rate application? //
The runaway glaciation surrounding the ocean basin //
Affects the population fluctuation on a continuous basis but that’s just the basics //
The juxtaposition of Can-I-Bus’s position //
The precision of something no other has written //
Way above and beyond what was intended //
The unparalleled malleable enunciation of a sentence //
You didn’t go to college, obviously //
I can tell by your ungodly unintelligible terminology //
Your remarkable odyssey //
The rhyme’s at modest speeds when the brain orders the body not to breathe //
Your competency is not up to speed, you’re not in my league //
You couldn’t possibly be hotter than me //
Or oppositely at minus twenty-five degrees //
You’ll squeeze but the condensation makes rifle barrels freeze //
Allow me to speak figuratively, nigga please //
My intellectual property’s about the size of Greece //
Your counselor advised you not to speak //
My counselor advised me to keep rhyming until they stopped the beat //
In the words of Joseph Heller, “I learned how to write better,” even though it sort of irked me //
He said he didn’t understand the process of the imagination but he felt he was at it's mercy //
Which exploits my point perfectly //
And certainly reinforces the reason why nobody’s probably ever heard of me //
Couldn’t understand what I mean by ‘ill’ //
Lest you try to translate what I print to film //
This is the line of will, the circle of time, the cycle of eternity, the emergence of one line //
Academic phonetics render critics tongue-tied //
The personified dry humor of cum laude alumni //
A wise man sees failure as progress //
A fool divorces his knowledge and misses the logic //
And loses his soul in the process obsessed with nonsense with a caricature that has no content //
My style is masterful, multilateral, I could battle a fool and be naturally cruel //
Words of scorn are a disastrous tool, from an existentialist’s view I’m a better rapper than you //
Grab the mic and rip your physical fabric in two, my attitude is fucked up but admirable //
Different methods interpreted into different forms //
From entirely different perceptions and seen from different norms //
Not just spitting a poem, there’s much more involved //
There’s much more pieces of the puzzle for you to solve //
Forty-eight orders of mechanical laws //
And rays of creational cause enhance the cadence of my bars //
Maybe I am self-absorbed //
But that’s the effect, to find the cause you should ask my A&R //
Today is what it is but only because yesterday was what it was //
Permitting you’ve heard of Beelzebub //
A tale of demons and drugs, pissy drunk in the club //
With the DJ doing the needle rub, chances are you’d never see me, son //
Yeah, I know my name’s Canibus but I can’t help you if you need a dub //
I came to holler at some big booty bitches and listen to the speakers thump //
Where’d you get conceited from? I’m so nice on the mic they want to beat me up //
It’s deep as fuck, I ain’t seen it all but I’ve seen enough, really unbelievable stuff //
There’s a lot of times when I want to speak but I’m stuck //
I should leave this rap shit alone and kick my incredible rhymes in the privacy of my own home //
My imagination is my own, the liberty to speak freely lyrically on the microphone //
With a pen in my hand I bring motion to the Enneagram and become Can-I-Millennium Man //
Engrave my back with the Emperor’s Stamp //
Been spitting scientific rap since the seventeenth century began //
Trying to escape the wicked empire of Def Jam in the land where lyrics are bland and heretics hang //
Every warrior has an ax to bury, but he has to learn to discern between enemy and adversary //
I said to myself, ‘Germaine, this is insane, it’s suicide, it’s controlled flight into terrain” //
I fought to regain control the plane but went up in a ball of flames //
And got banned from the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame //
For two bars I kept hearing in my head over and over again //
It cost me everything //
I’m convinced now that more than the truth is at stake //
Where people create language that pretends to communicate //
Euphemisms are misunderstood as mistakes //
But it’s a byproduct of the ghetto music we make //
From an extroverted point of view, I think it’s too late //
Hip-Hop has never been the same since eighty-eight //
Since it became a lucrative profession there’s a misconception //
That a movement in any direction is progression //
Even though the potency of it lessens //
Big money industries writing checks to suppress the question //
And nobody gives a fuck no more //
No one goes to the bookstore ever since the confluence of Moore’s Law //
But I stay in the lab like Niels Bohr, his son Aage, Edward Lorenz and Leo Szilard //
Lyrically I took rap music and turned the knob //
To the right full-throttle and added panache //
Why would I argue with my own conscience over the truth //
That’s like me telling myself, “Don’t tell me what to do” //
Dialyses and analyses of battle emcees, sometimes I say things I myself can’t believe //
My lyrical is so skillfully elliptical, I can understand how it makes you miserable //
You wonder why I never let you play your beats for me? //
And why I keep my studio enshrouded in secrecy? //
You wonder what’s my infatuation with Alicia Keys? //
Canibus, why don’t you speak to me? //
Yo, I meant it when I said no one can shine on a song that features me //
That’s why I said it so vehemently //
You need to replace the hate with respect, I’m probably the best yet //
Poet Laureate! //
