[USE SELECTED RECORDED MALE VOICE/PERSONA] [PRESERVE NATURAL VOCAL IDENTITY] [STORYTELLING RAP] [LOW, NATURAL SPEAKING REGISTER] [CONTROLLED EMOTION] [NO FORCED RAP ACCENT] [SOULFUL SUNG SAMPLE TEXTURE — NOT A SECOND LEAD] [CONTINUOUS ARRANGEMENT — NO FALSE ENDINGS] [Cold Open] You don't gotta tell me how it looked. [beat] I was there. [BEAT ENTERS] [Verse 1] I remember rooms nobody took pictures in. Conversations at the table when the money getting thin. Adults talking low like the kids couldn't hear. Funny— you learn what silence means when you grow up near it. I remember good days too. That's important. Don't paint the whole past dark just to make the story stronger. There was laughing in the kitchen, somebody calling from the yard. Life wasn't one thing. Life was all of it at once. [Hook] I was there. I know what it took. Know what never made the picture, know what never made the book. Don't need to make it harder. Don't need to make it fair. You can tell me how you see it. I was there. [SOUL SAMPLE + BASS — 6 BARS] [Verse 2] I remember being young thinking grown meant knowing things. Then I got grown and found out grown folks improvise like everybody else. Bills come. People leave. Plans change. You make the best call you can with what you know that day. Sometimes you nail it. Sometimes years later you think— man... I would've handled that different. That's life. No edit button. Just another morning and another chance to carry it better. [Hook] I was there. I know what it took. Know the parts that came out beautiful, know the parts that never should. I don't need somebody else's version telling me what I felt back there. I remember. I was there. [INSTRUMENTAL — 10 BARS] [WARM SOUL CHORDS] [REAL BASS] [DRUM BREAK] [Verse 3 — tighter pocket] And now I catch myself doing things I used to watch. Saying, "Turn that light off." Checking doors twice. Standing at the counter looking at a number like staring might make it smaller. [beat] That's funny. Time will put you on both sides of a memory. One day you're the kid wondering why they're worried. Next day somebody smaller looking up at you like you know exactly what you're doing. So you smile. Say, "We're good." And you mean it as much as you can. Maybe that's what they did too. [BEAT STRIPS] [Bridge] I don't forgive every wrong just because time passed. I don't call every hard thing a blessing either. Some things were good. Some weren't. Some I still don't understand. [beat] But I don't need to rewrite it. I was there. [FULL BEAT RETURNS] [Final Hook] I was there. Every mile of it. The ordinary days, the heavy ones, the ones I wouldn't trade a bit. And if you ask me how I made it here— I couldn't give you one answer if I tried. Just a thousand little moments and a life I actually lived. I was there. [INSTRUMENTAL PAYOFF] [Outro] That's enough proof for me. [beat] I was there.
