Playing Chess with a Checkered Past

The origin, place it starts
Seen things not for the faint of heart
Turn a bloody history to language arts
First I had to go back and change some parts
You got a checkered past, we play chess here
Only say truth, make this your best year
Hip hop people we be staying close knit
Walk up in the place and they say oh shit
Seth on Gray Street got a style you can grow with
Hide my emotions, cry in the ocean
Clutch to it like a child with a blanket
Comes through into my mind when I made this
Bet you wish you could bottle up and save it
A new model's created when it's outdated
Don't gotta shout like a loud neighbor
But never step in front of a crowd without flavor

If it's too gray add a splash of color
Nothing in our pockets but we have each other (x2)

I'd rather be even keel, than keep it real
Hold all the secrets to be revealed
If you don't need it just leave it here
Drop off all the baggage from the recent years
Lift the weight and escape, try to forge a pathway
Time's defined by much more than bad days
Hard to see when the war comes back
Right at your front door then the floor collapsed
Start to think you were born to lack
But I like to believe I'm too mature for that
Got too many miles on the course of rap
Tore up a dirt road on a horse's back
Live on like this song, sit back on a long ride
Ten years from now, set it free from the archives
It's a way I can live to tell
When my organs are all gone, bodie's just a shell

If it's too gray add a splash of color
Nothing in our pockets but we have each other (x2)

I go on living, experience it, write it down and hope
you get it
Peer into the past at your old school image
Look at your life now there's so few in it
Solitary symptoms
Everybody's gonna feel lonely sometimes
Caught in the dark wishing for the sunshine
More than can be conveyed in just one rhyme
Addicted to the feeling I get when I'm on mics
Never less as the years elapse
Now residing on Gray Street paying property tax
A sloppy verse from a glass of whiskey
Pour it over ice on a night to live free
One message I gather with some effort
From your summer tanktop to fall sweatshirt
Expose your feelings, it's so appealing
Got a lot of issues but you know I'm dealing