If You Can Hear This

[Intro: radio static, a tuning dial] Ninety-nine point nothin' You up? [Hook: male lead, gang shouts the last word, scratched echoes] If you can hear this, turn it up loud If you can hear this, you ain't the only one out They can shut the streets, they can't shut the sound If you can hear this, pass it around! (Around!) [Verse 1: raspy, hungry, fast] Curfew at nine and every sidewalk swept Every corner got a floodlight and a truck and a threat City hall decided music was a public disease So I built a little tower out of scrap and some keys Back of a bread van, antenna through the roof Kick drum in the floorboards and a car battery for proof I don't got a license, I don't got a permit I got a crate of records and a mic and a purpose Two blocks over, there's a kid in a window Nurse on her break with the earbud and the head low Cab parked crooked with the dial on my spot Grandma on the fire escape tappin' on a pot [Flow switch: half-bar trades with the gang] (Where you at?) Movin' (Where you at?) Movin' (They comin'?) Always (You stoppin'?) Not even [Hook: male lead, gang shouts the last word, scratched echoes] If you can hear this, turn it up loud If you can hear this, you ain't the only one out They can shut the streets, they can't shut the sound If you can hear this, pass it around! (Around!) [Verse 2: tighter, the trucks closing in] Signal trucks circlin' with a dish on the top Triangulatin' every bass line like it's evidence they caught Three minutes on the air, that's the rule, then I ghost Move the van, change the alley, never stay where they post Rule two, never say a name, never say a street Rule three, if they get me, keep the record on repeat Got fifty transmitters sittin' in fifty kitchens Fifty cousins with a solderin' iron and a mission They don't want the noise, man, they want it quiet Want you hungry, scared, and callin' silence a diet Every time they cut me, three more come alive Every time they jam a channel, fifty more arrive [Bridge: spoken, beat drops to bass guitar and static] This one's for the night shift For the kid with the headphones under the covers For everybody told to keep it down Don't keep it down. Turn the shit up They're two blocks out. I can hear the tires So here's what we do [Beat Switch: double-time breakbeat, scratches, gang roars] Every window open! (Open!) Every speaker on the sill! (On the sill!) Every radio in the city on the same dial Let 'em try to lock up a whole block for a while [Verse 3: double-time chase] Tires screech, I'm out the back with the crate on my shoulder Antenna in the dumpster, mic cord wrapped like a holster They bust the van open, it's a speaker and a note Says "Turn around," and the whole street's playin' what I wrote Fifty little towers lit up like a fuse They can catch a man, but they can't arrest a groove [Final Hook: the whole city on gang vocals] If you can hear this, turn it up loud If you can hear this, you ain't the only one out They can shut the streets, they can't shut the sound If you can hear this, pass it around! (Around!) [Outro: static, overlapping callers, a new voice takes the mic] You up? (We up!) Ninety-nine point nothin'. Pass it around