Keys to the City: "Respiration" By Black Star

Black Star represented that rare moment in which two dynamically talented lyricists, Mos Def and Talib Kweli, joined forced to create a moving, poetic portrait of their life and times in New York City. The album, also called Black Star, was released in 1998 and tells the story from the other side of Rudy Guliani's New York. Sure, it's a long way from City Hall to city steps in Brooklyn, but the miles between are documented by Black Star with precision. 

Perhaps the largest building built in this city of songs is the track "Respiration", in that it seems to somehow encapsulate the whole spirt behind the album like a thesis statement stapled to the door of landlords, politicians,  and corrupt city cops. The song starts with a minor chord guitar strum, building keys, and a quick story about tagging or spray painting a building, and a phrase softly whispered in Spanish (escuchela la ciudad respirado or "listen to it, the city breathing") before the song kicks in hardcore with the beat that lasts the whole way through. A gotham view of New York is presented, a New York oppressed by crime, rising rents . . .a kaleidoscope vision that is hard to express in the right words. Many of the lyrics sound like they come straight out of an all encompassing Walt Whitman poem: "the new moon rose high in the crown of the metropolis/ shining, like who on top of this?". Meanwhile, other lines  sound like a Marxist analysis: "hard knuckles on the second hands/ of working class watches".  Throughout, the political is interwoven with the personal, as if we were able to watch ten representations if New York City in a few minutes. Listen below:

Escúchela la ciudad respirando

The new moon rode high in the crown of the metropolis
Shining, like who on top of this?
People was tussling, arguing and bustling
Gangstas of Gotham hardcore hustling
I'm wrestling with words and ideas
My ears is pricked, seeking what will transmit
The scribes can apply to transcript, yo
This ain't no time where the usual is suitable
Tonight alive, let's describe the inscrutable
The indisputable, we New York the narcotic
Draped in metal and fiber optics
Where mercenaries is paid to trade hot stock tips
For profits, thirsty criminals take pockets
Hard knuckles on the second hands of working class watches
Skyscrapers is colossus, the cost of living is preposterous
Stay alive, you play or die, no options, no Batman and Robin
Can't tell between the cops and the robbers, they both partners, they all heartless
With no conscience, back streets stay darkened
Where unbeliever hearts stay hardened
My eagle talons stay sharpened, like city lights stay throbbing
You either make a way or stay sobbing
The shiny Apple is bruised but sweet and if you choose to eat
You could lose your teeth, many crews retreat
Nightly news repeat, who got shot down and locked down
Spotlight to savages, NASDAQ averages
My narrative rose to explain this existence
Amidst the harbor lights which remain in the distance

So much on my mind that I can't recline
Blastin holes in the night til she bled sunshine
Breathe in, inhale vapors from bright stars that shine
Breathe out, weed smoke retrace the skyline
Heard the bass ride out like an ancient mating call
I can't take it y'all, I can feel the city breathing
Chest heaving, against the flesh of the evening
Sigh before we die like the last train leaving

Breathin in deep city breaths, sittin on shitty steps
We stoop to new lows, hell froze the night the city slept
The beast crept through concrete jungles
Communicating with one another
And ghetto birds where waters fall
From the hydrants to the gutters
The beast walk the beats, but the beats we be makin
You on the wrong side of the track, lookin visibly shaken
Taken them plungers, plungin to death that's painted by the numbers
With Krylon applied pressure, cats is playin God
By havin children by a lesser baby mother but fuck it
We played against each other like puppets, swearin you got pull
When the only pull you got is the wool over your eyes
Gettin knowledge in jail like a blessing in disguise
Look in the skies for God, what you see besides the smog
Is broken dreams flying away on the wings of the obscene
Thoughts that people put in the air
Places where you could get murdered over a glare
But everything is fair
It's a paradox we call reality
So keepin it real will make you casualty of abnormal normality
Killers Born Naturally like, Mickey and Mallory
Not knowing the ways'll get you capped like an NBA salary
Some cats be emceeing to illustrate what we be seeing
Hard to be a spiritual being when shit is shakin what you believe in
For trees to grow in Brooklyn, seeds need to be planted
I'm asking if y'all feel me and the crowd left me stranded
My blood pressure boiled and rose, cause New York niggas
Actin spoiled at shows, to the winners the spoils go
I take the L, transfer to the 2, head to the gates
New York life type trife the Roman Empire state

So much on my mind that I can't recline
Blastin holes in the night til she bled sunshine
Breathe in, inhale vapors from bright stars that shine
Breathe out, weed smoke retrace the skyline
Heard the bass ride out like an ancient mating call
I can't take it y'all, I can feel the city breathing
Chest heaving, against the flesh of the evening
Sigh before we die like the last train leaving

Yo, on The Amen, Corner I stood lookin at my former hood
Felt the spirit in the wind, knew my friend was gone for good
Threw dirt on the casket, the hurt, I couldn't mask it
Mixin down emotions, struggle I hadn't mastered
I choreograph seven steps to heaven
In hell, waiting to exhale and make the bread leaven
Veteran of a cold war It's Chica-I-go for
What I know or, what's known
So some days I take the bus home, just to touch home
From the crib I spend months gone
Sat by the window with a clutched dome listenin to shorties cuss long
Young girls with weak minds, but they bust strong
Tried to call, or at least beep the Lord, but didn't have a touch-tone
It's a dog-eat-dog world, you gotta mush on
Some of this land I must own
Outta the city, they want us gone
Tearin down the 'jects creatin plush homes
My circumstance is between Cabrini and Love Jones
Surrounded by hate, yet I love home
Ask my guy how he thought travellin the world sound
Found it hard to imagine he hadn't been past downtown
It's deep, I heard the city breathe in its sleep
A reality I touch, but for me it's hard to keep
Deep, I heard my man breathe in his sleep
A reality I touch, but for me it's hard to keep

So much on my mind that I can't recline
Blastin holes in the night til she bled sunshine
Breathe in, inhale vapors from bright stars that shine
Breathe out, weed smoke retrace the skyline
How the bass ride out like an ancient mating call
I can't take it y'all, I can feel the city breathing
Chest heaving, against the flesh of the evening
Kiss the eyes goodbye I'm on the last train leaving