[INTRO — SPOKEN / LOW, DRY] They called me Satan. Maybe they weren't wrong. I was angry at everybody. The world. The law. The white man. Myself. I thought prison was where they put your body. I didn't know it could be where you found your mind. [VERSE 1 — CLAUSTROPHOBIC] Steel bars. Concrete. Four walls closing in. Every morning looked like yesterday, every night began again. I had nothing but my anger, nothing but the time, Nothing but the memories of every way I'd crossed the line. I used to think I was free when I could run through the streets. Now I'm counting every footstep from a guard down the hall to my feet. Funny— I had spent my whole life trying not to be trapped. Now I couldn't leave the room, and somehow I started asking: "Who am I?" [VERSE 2] Then I met a man who didn't talk like me. Bimbi had a mind that could make a prison disappear. He could turn a conversation into a classroom, make a fool feel foolish without ever raising his voice. And I listened. First time in a long time, I listened. I had spent years learning how to read people. Now somebody taught me how to read. Letters started coming from the family I had left behind. They told me things I didn't know about myself. And then came the books. [BEAT STARTS OPENING UP] One book became two. Two became ten. I couldn't get enough. History. Philosophy. Religion. Science. The world. I copied words until my hand cramped. I learned what words could do when you had enough of them. [HOOK — FIRST REAL LIFT] I thought they locked me in a cage— but they gave me time. I thought they took my freedom— but they gave me a mind. Every page was a window, every word another door. I went looking for a way out and found a world I'd never seen before. I was Satan. Then I started asking what made a man that way. [VERSE 3 — FASTER / HUNGRIER] Who wrote the history? Who got left out? Who built the cities? Who worked the fields? Who got rich? Who got robbed? Who got called civilized and who got called wild? I wanted names. Dates. Facts. I wanted every answer they forgot to give me. I wanted to know where I came from before somebody told me what I was supposed to be. And then— Elijah Muhammad. A different language. A different story. A different Malcolm. My brothers and sisters were telling me that there was something I had never been taught: That my mind belonged to me. [HOOK — BIGGER] I thought they locked me in a cage— but they gave me time. I thought they took my freedom— but they gave me a mind. Every page was a window, every word another door. I went looking for a way out and found a world I'd never seen before. [BRIDGE — MUSIC DROPS] The man who walked into that cell wanted revenge. The man reading in that cell wanted answers. Those are not the same hunger. [VERSE 4 — FULL PRODUCTION] I learned discipline. I learned prayer. I learned history. I learned to care. I learned a man's direction can change with what he sees. I learned the strongest chain might be the one you never notice. I had spent my youth trying to outrun myself. Now I was sitting still long enough to meet myself. The books kept opening. The mind kept growing. And somewhere in those pages, Malcolm Little started dying. Not the boy— the name. [BREAK — NEAR SILENCE] Malcolm Little. Malcolm Little. Malcolm— [WHISPER] X. [BEAT SLAMS BACK IN] [FINAL VERSE] X for the history they couldn't give me. X for the name that wasn't mine. X for the unknown I was finally willing to face. Not an answer. A question. A mark where something had been erased. I walked into prison thinking I already knew myself. I walked out knowing I had barely begun. They called me Satan when I had nothing to say. Now I had a voice. And I was ready to use it. [OUTRO — MUSIC EXPANDING] The cage was still there. The world outside was still waiting. But I wasn't the same man who went in. [QUIET] They took away my years. I found a lifetime in them. [FINAL HIT] Malcolm X.
