First memory—piano and I, my hands stretched just as far as they can to both sides / Slamming the white keys with palms, notes collide, black ebony screams through the noise / I’m so high, having the kind of a moment that a child can only find / Beauty unfolding through the light of hopeful eyes / If I’d have known what was to come, it’d blow my mind—but instead I smiled / Just to think, its so sublime

Fast forward to about Grade 8 or 9 / I start writing but I keep it inside because I’m too embarrassed like I’m living a lie / only Eminem was cool enough to rap as a white guy / So where does that leave me? I’m bigger than most adults but naïve as a preteen / I guess I’ll put my head down to sleep / Maybe one day I’ll be cool enough to rap in my dreams

CHORUS

First love; young lady and I / I remember all the emotions I debated inside / Just sitting, showing her something on the keyboard I made and I try singing to her but I feel ashamed and I don’t know why / Crossing my heart cuz in that moment I hoped to die / Not realizing that I’d yet to be fully alive / She was so kind, and I just choked / I didn’t say a word—the truth hurts baby no lie
So fast forward to new lament / I’m just seventeen, stringbean feeling upset / I’m thinking that maybe I should drop school and just quit / I’ve got 99 problems but they’re all in my head / Believing that I’m a special little flower yet I was depressed / Every petal separated and burnt to a crisp / How funny that I graduated but not with my friends / How was I to make it in a world of uncertain events?

CHORUS

First child, my daughter and I / I’m remembering how the doctor came and shoved me aside because my little baby was trying to cry but her lungs were filled heavy with the fluid inside / I’m sweating / I can remember now your mother and I, we’re looking at each other over all the smothering light / She might’ve mistaken me for someone other than I / I take a breath and look over to recover the child

I see my little girl encumbered with IV’s / Tube from her chest / She’s okay and I see all in a moment my life is finally showing I’m chosen for something rightly / All of my suffering rises inside me / What does it take to find what I might become? A simple father with a mission from above; raising a daughter who will always be my love

CHORUS

Hey little boy, you don’t know it / One day you will grow to be a man and that man will then look back / He knows more than you can and he’s telling you from far away / It’s going to be okay / It’s going to be okay… don’t cry little boy cause its okay

Don’t cry