Scroobius Pip - 1000 Words

They say a pictures worth a thousand words
So with these thousand words
I'll paint a picture in your mind that breaks the rule of thirds

Let's go right back to the start
What better way to begin
Before too much of the corruption, the temptation and sin.
Before the gloss was taken off, back to sand castles and grins.
Before the world we were living in became riddled with Ritalin
I had a very normal birth, no wise men did attend
Born into my family as son, brother and friend
I had a normal start to life with a very normal infancy
And over the years many events did influence me
But there's one that stands out now with a special place in my mind
And the more times I think back the more new memories I find
When I was four years old, out in France, I almost died.

A wave swept up to the shore and took me back for the ride.
And in that moment of fear I gazed below normal tide
That's when the depths of the ocean showed what was really inside.
I saw a man sat just below the surface on a rock.
And his wisdom filled gaze withdrew all panic and shock
And unlocked an inner calm that let me float down to his depths
Without any flailing shaking arms or panic filled breaths.
I swear we sat for hours before words were introduced.
Just relaxing in a world, below the fights and abuse.
Below the weapons of war, below the cars and the ships.
And then when he felt I understood he slowly parted his lips

"The pen is far mightier than the sword", he said,
As he stabbed his pen in my leg and the ink mixed with the red.
"With this action I inject the gift of knowledge instead
Of all the other cluttered thoughts that will clog up your head
But if at any point you take the spoken word just for granted
These words will stick in your mouth and fall out broken and parted"

It didn't hurt for some reason but I could feel a change inside
But I hadn't really understood what his words had implied
I thought id wait for his next words with my mind open wide
And with the guidelines that he gave me I would try to abide
Again much time passed with silence being the topic
But the serenity was such bliss I had no words that could stop it
Then after what seemed like a lifetime had passed
He stopped and looked right through me like I was made up of glass
And at that very moment I was grabbed from this landscape
As I left this wise old figure I quickly prompted a handshake
And I was carried back to shore, my life saved by my own dad
With no memory at the time of the experience I'd had.

And so I went on with my life these things locked up in my brain
I grew up no different from the rest, everything just stayed the same
Until one day I realized sometimes my own speech was erratic
Like the needle on my record would get all caught up and static
And at school, this affliction didn't make things too easy
An easy target so the kids would sometimes laugh at and tease me
I guess there's no denying this made me stand out from the rest
But that kind of thing has never fazed me. I just took it in jest
Sure the broken stammers of a youth can kind of bring some attention
But the sympathy of a teacher can get you out of detention
And this continued, until I reached a certain age
Until I started to thrive for knowledge from every word and every page
All of a sudden, the words would just flow off of my tongue
When I got bored of how one sounded I'd just learn a new one
I started listening to all these people who showed great use of each word

Feeling the buzz with every single line from Gil that I heard
The way he manipulated the language and really made it develop
As he told another story from 125th Street and Lenox
And Mr. Mojo Risin', the American poet
Had enraptured my mind with words and would never know it
I would sit in my room for hours just listening out
For every underlying meaning in the words he would shout
Then I'd put on The Specials to hear of their social commentary
You couldn't help but get drawn in, sometimes even involuntary
And the way that Rakim would take my mind on a journey
To a kind of lifestyle and scene that never used to concern me
A completely different world to the one that I lived in
But I could connected to the language and the passion within him
So I started to write, inspired by those here before me
Id found an outlet for thoughts a way of telling a story
So I wrote and I wrote until I felt it was time

To put some of this stuff on tape and then I started to rhyme
Once I started climbing I knew there was no way I could slip
And that was the one true birth of this here Scroobius Pip
The one with the leather ties and weathered eyes
Who's 37 clever lines left 37 severed minds
The one that speaks but never lies
And sometimes fails but always tries
And the more he writes the more he finds
It pays to bleed between the lines.

They say a pictures worth a thousand words
So with these thousand words
I'll paint a picture in your mind that breaks the rule of thirds

They say a pictures worth a thousand words
So with these thousand words
I'll paint a picture in your mind that breaks the rule of thirds