Last week I sat in a park for the first time this year. The sun was shining, and I’d just been walking around in Paris listening to Nas’s album It Was Written, wearing my orange tinted sunglasses. When I’m wearing them it feels like I’m transported away into a music video. Nas lifts me up and takes me away. Hooray.
Well, in the park I started writing—it’s something I’ve been doing consistently this year. I have in some way finally found my voice in writing, and I write raps. Who would’ve thought. According to my mate, if you see me on the metro you’d never believe that I was listening to the Wu-Tang Clan—she said they’d rather think I was blasting Enya. So the hardcore surface I’m going for is obviously not shining through. But in my mind I’m the exact opposite. In the mind of Hellil’, I’m a slayer of poems and raps. I spit it so hard the folks around me just gasp and stare. When I do my rhymes ain’t nobody getting in my way—I freestyle so hard I raise the bloody non-existing roof of the city. That’s my daring fantasy. To be a rapstar.
And this is some of the outcome. The first one was written at 2 AM, with inspiration from hanging out in the flat of a friend:
Lady tryna pour that last liqueur from the jar
The door’s ajar, look who’s watching from afar
It’s him, the eyes just in haze
Trop spliffy we get a jiffy jiff witty bits turn to spitting hits
The juicy is running low, no curses, we getting flow from the jack, the ginny n the pack
They’ve all got our backs, just pull up to the track and get on with the magic
I’m just tryna have it, don’t mess with my madness
Confronting the sad, with the carelessness of someone with a bad habit
As all rappers do, I’ve also got a sweet side to me, when a dawg be feelin’ down I write them a lil’ rhyme:
If you feel stressed
I’ll help you out of this mess
So you can feel like a happy noodle
Fluffy like a lil’ poddle
I root 4 you cuz you a kween
You be a strong ass luminous lazer beam
This is my own creative boost rap:
Whatever comes along in life, it’s gonna be just fine…
I got that groove, I can’t help it…it swoops me away, I won’t stop it,
never clock it.
Life ain’t a competition, u gotta work— trust your intuition.
I never knew i had it before, now it’s right at the shore…
Swimming with the fishes, the life in the sea…
Whatever it’ll be, life. Imma be all right.
—By Nea E., 20, Paris ♦