San Quentin Blues

[Verse 1: Benjamin Earl Turner]
- Fuck it
- You go, I go?
- Nah I mean I go, you go
- Same time since we did time at the same time

It ain't all bad
But if it bleeds it leads

And I can't tell the difference between
The cell block and a triage wing

I got a finite amount
Of fortitude in this fortress

Battling the evil gorgeous
Of a panopticon

Seen but invisible
Like the 13th Amendments tentacles

Every night might could
Be you verse' you in the Octagon

I'm in crime school
Trying to be truant

How the f*ck you think
We teach criminals
How to be criminal
Here in the fallen Gods Parthenon?

I'ma be the paragon prisoner
Dodge all the sinister

Ms. Understood been
My number one visitor

And I ain't seen God since
Mom brought the minister

[Verse 2: Rafael Casal]
All right, here I go

I am bench-pressing hard time

Round-robin family
Visit full of fiction

Smile, don't let them
See your spirit flinching

Giving the performance of a lifetime

Everybody coming in
Is leaving looking a bit more
Like they are living in the same prison
That we doing a bid in

How the fuck do we pretend that
We ain't split down the middle

I'm a cocked pistol
I'm a pot boiling over hot, hot

They in here with us
Locked in the cell block

I'm extra baggage for
My wife. I'm a bellhop

Money on my books used
To be for the nail shops

Now every penny pinched

[BOTH]
Now I'm a dog in
A cage they can watch age

They can watch change
Watch become strange

Watch become something
Prison sickness made

A Frankenstein of the carceral state

Whoo
Each minute feels like ten

[INMATES]
Ten

[TURNER]
Every week is a month

[INMATES]
Month

[TURNER]
A thousand years in a second

[INMATES]
Second

[TURNER]
A life goes out in a snuff

[ALL]
I'm on your head
I'm on your cell block
I'm on your cell block

I'm on your head, on your cell block
We on your cell block
We on your head

[TURNER]
- Hey, y'all got a camera?
- Film this shit

You know the kind of shit you
Hear talking through a toilet?

We once made liquor out of oranges

Moonshine shedding light on our torment

Wake up like reanimated corpses

Keep a tally for all the times
I considered slitting my wrists

And letting the rivers run red

As a Mississippi caucus. [YELLS]

[CASAL]
Don't know if my soul'll make it out

Who I used to be is fading now

This is an oven for
Making monsters out of men

And I can feel us baking now

This is chain-ganging
State-sanctioned

Slave-trading, license plate making

We numbers
240161 on my jumper

Separated into colors

Highly orchestrated
To hate each other

Looking back, what
Happened isn't a wonder

No wonder we...

[TURNER]
- Hey, now, hold tight, I'm friends with his wife

[CASAL]
- What's up?

[INMATE]
- He said he knows your wife, n*gga

[CASAL]
- Man, f*ck you!

[TURNER]
Each minute feels like ten

[INMATES]
Ten

Every week is a month

[INMATES]
Month

A thousand years in a second

[INMATES]
Second

A life goes out in a snuff

{LAUGHS} See, we made to be opposition

Like Abrahamic religion

Unholy cannibalism

The secret cabal ain't secret at all

[BOTH]
The threat of a law reinforced
By the force of these walls

You can't be in hell and not embrace it

[TURNER]
Let me guess, they
Think your chest vacant?

Yup, hate it. It's
Almost like these bars

Become some form of
Infinite separations

[CASAL]
Nah, nah, nah
Now, hold the f*ck on

This shit breaks a family
I feel mine dissolving

Who can love a man with
One foot in the coffin?

How can I compete when
Freedom is an option?

[BOTH]
I'd do anything to be
Back where we started

[CASAL]
I'd do anything to
Be back where I started

Right before I got
Dragged out of my apartment

[TURNER]
Right before they
Dragged me out the restaurant

And closed the door on
Futures that I said I wanted

[BOTH]
Now my life is haunted. {GRUNTS}

[TURNER]
Each minute feels like ten

Every week is a month

A thousand years in a second

A life goes out in a snuff

Each minute feels like ten

Every weakness a crime

A thousand years in a second

[CASAL AND TURNER]
Wish I could just
Leave it all behind

Behind

Behind