[INTRO] Past-due paper by the coffee Scripture open by my hand Funny place to finally meet yourself When the world stops calling you "the man" Eight months watching numbers shrink While the quiet got loud somehow I lost the title, kept the mirror And I can finally say it now [VERSE 1] [WARM MEMORY] [LIGHT VIOLINS] [CLEAR WORDS] Before they changed the signs on Bankhead Bankhead Courts was home to me Food stamps in the kitchen Whole galaxies inside of me Chemistry, rockets, Star Trek reruns Lost in Space up on the screen Little heavy kid with a giant mind Trying hard not to be seen Mama made beauty with her hands Could cry a river, laugh by noon Daddy played jazz beneath club lights Then put history in my room He gave me books and bigger questions She gave me feeling, color, flame Some things found me far too early And desire learned my name [PRE-CHORUS] I was smart enough to dream beyond the skyline Still too young to govern what I knew Had a mind that could imagine other planets Couldn't always tell myself what not to do [CHORUS] I'm a man now Not 'cause time put gray in my beard Not 'cause I learned how to win I can sit with the truth I used to fear I'm a man now Mind at the wheel, heart under God The boy in me still dreams of stars I just don't let every hunger steer the car I don't need the room to bow I can finally say it now I'm a man now [VERSE 2] Uncle Sam put stripes across my shoulder Couldn't put command inside my bones Missed a watch chasing women and a good time Uniform on, but I hadn't grown Then marriage, powder on a card table Freebase opened up another door One cheap rock made pleasure feel like heaven Then made everything else worth less than before Our son was coming, we both got clean For a minute love outran the flame But distance, pride and old temptation Left cracks that never closed the same Eighteen years of chasing that first feeling Jails and streets and promises gone thin Then eleven years with walls around my body That's when something else began [VERSE 3] Books became windows History got wider Technology lit a future in my head Language, Scripture, people, power I read until the cell felt less like bed Back in the nineties I wrote for local rappers Quiet pen behind somebody else's name Came home years later, picked it up again Different life, but I still knew the game Then work got good, checks got bigger Sales floors, hospitals, office lights I knew how to build a life that looked successful Still had old appetites picking fights I hurt good women trying to feed an old hunger Learned that knowledge ain't the same as being free You can know a thousand things about the world And still not know how to govern what you need [BRIDGE] Man meant mind—I thought it meant intelligence Something I could measure, something I could prove Now I know a mind is more than what it understands It's what it governs when desire starts to move Freedom ain't obeying every appetite Strength ain't never needing help A grown man can face the truth without performing And take responsibility for himself God was there through every version Even roads I wouldn't choose Now the mind can lead the heart Without pretending there's no bruise [FINAL CHORUS] I'm a man now Took me most my life to understand Not the money, not the women Not the uniform that makes the man I'm a man now Mind at the wheel, heart under God The boy in me still dreams of stars Now I know how to lead him through the dark Every high and every fall Every cell and every scar Didn't make me less than human They just showed me where we are I ain't saying I've arrived I'm saying I know how To answer for the life I live I'm a man now [OUTRO] Still learning Still becoming But I'm a man now
