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If You Can Hear This

by Dug & Happy Tooth

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1.
(Chorus) If you can hear this everything's going perfectly, currently, nobody's trying to murder me. If you can hear this, we did at least one thing right. If you can hear this it raises our spirits, even if there's interference that's how it is with lyrics. If you can hear this, everything'll probably be fine. (Dug) It's either write about the typical things or you might as well have written in invisible ink. I do this cause I can't afford to visit a shrink, and cause I know I'm not the only one who lives on the brink. Like with a mailbox waiting for the saucers to come. Or the economy or something else impossibly dumb. If you can hear this, I hope you know better. But most days I don't so really no pressure. We played shows, people showed. That means we achieved our goals. I don't know where else to go. You were friendly, we weren't ready. I know I'll probably never drive a Bentley. But at least the seats aren't empty in the Chevy. They say the music scene isn't what it used to be. But that would be true, even if it improved. So I'm not sure what that proves to me. You bring the community, we'll bring the tunes and lunacy. (Chorus) (Happy Tooth) My life is full of garbage I haven't thrown away. Though I may be broke today I have a place to go and stay. So afraid of the folks they overpay I'm givin advice to kids like, put down the Vicodin and learn to play the violin. Find a pen. This goes without saying. If you can hear this there's always something worth saying. Waiting, wasting, waning, lying like we found somethin. Smiling, driving diving, dying not to malfunction. Listen all ya'll its a bad mirage. My catalog is sabotage it's always raining cats and dogs. And you don't have to leave, but you can't stay here. If you can hear this I hope you're having a great year. Shakespeare died. All alone in an alley, I'm just part of the algae. They won't write books about me. Howling at the moon while my life corrodes. If you can hear this, success came a long time ago. (Chorus) (Jae Esquire) Homie I'm good. Homie I'm straight. Homie I'm full. Yeah I ate today. I said, homie I'm good. Homie I'm straight. Homie I'm full. Yeah I ate today. Hey, hey, October, fallen like no other. All gold everything, you a shiny muthafucka. Got me on a new level, beats bang in my trucka, 157's now, I'm a jazzy muthafucka uh Not trippin, middle name is forgiveness. Gold eagle round my neck, flyin high above the pigeons. Yah, storm find ya damaged in the yard. Respect my name before you all take guard. Come harder than you ever, ever could silly. Didn't you know that rabbit tricks are for kiddies? Who I got with me? Yeah the dream team, Happy Tooth and Dug, yeah we get that cream. Naw mean? Ay!
2.
(Chorus) This is a song to forget all of your problems to. This is a bomb, kinda like what you'd see on the news. This is a song to forget all of your problems to. Nowadays we don't really got a lot to lose. This is a song to forget all of your problems to. Everything can only get better I promise you. This is a song for all the homies in denial. That know nobody can reconcile with just a smile. (Happy Tooth) I don't wanna write about how great I am. Or how I hate the man but this cage is cramped. Or how my favorite band is gonna play again but no one will stay for them. Sometimes I hate this pen with my patience thin. Face displays a razor grin, some lights are made to dim. So I'm fading then, but wait a bit for the blazing end. It's all fake pretend, like the money at the bottom of my pockets. Showin up late again, feels funny calling all of my problems topics. Fuck these troubles, bloody knuckles, punctured muscles, stepped in muddy puddles, no one wants to struggle, rappin over stomach rumbles. Sick of distrust, living cigarette butts. Always stuck in the same shit, the prison is us. We don't stand a damn chance writing what your hands cant. Self expressions violent like a slam dance. It's hard to move on and not do wrong when everything's cruel life becomes a long blues song. Truths gone, and I've been a basket case that's half awake. So everyone just back away. I rap about reality, guess that I always will. It's either that get paid hourly, die, or swallow pills. It's all for thrills or maybe over-indulgence. There's no way to solve this with hopeless impulses. I wanna write about how all my ghosts are dead and I can go to bed overfed with no regrets in my broken head. (Chorus) (the Momus) Now I've wandered aimlessly, and I've pondered just the same. Often laundered shamelessly, while I"m squanderin for change. But my honors just the same, cause there's honor in the shame. There's shame in our pride and there's pride in our pain. Too much pride in this game. Too much time spent in vain. Wasted time to explain reasons why I don't change. Guess I'll die just the same with my past life to blame. Like to say I'd be amazed if no ones cryin at my grave. To desire I'm enslaved, entire life I have craved. Lightin pipes night and day until I'm tyin off my veins. Fight or flight, still ingrained. Yes I like to escape, like to fade away, like the pain at bay, but the pain remains. So words I wrote, words of hope. Alongside hurtful words I spoke. Word as hope is just a hurtful joke. A long time spent just hurtin folks. A long line of amends, a road to friends or foe to mend my woes, yet another chapter in my life I intend to close. (Chorus) (Dug) Half-assed past and yet I can't stop watching it. Gain perspective on the wreckage by etching it on a monument. I'll admit my songs are all a bad news burial plot. You can find me where the miracles not. Dude looks like a lady left him. All his hooks are angry questions. Successfully argued against hope. I clearly have such great intentions. Dogs don't eat dogs people do. In fact people eat people too. And I'm not saying that I wanna play dumb but I thought this was what I had wanted to escape from. Fishing in polluted streams. Living the confusing dream. It isn't what it used to be, it's so much better. Yep. Everything's as I imagined it. Imaginary but immaculate. I'm a fragile fractal passing for passionate. Some days I even believe that;s accurate. Nihilist refrigerator magnets. Consider that my catnip. At this point I can't even shut my cabinets. They say it's a habit, well yeah but its a classic. Bear with me, the whimsy's getting flimsy. No wait, bear witness. This whole business is a sickness. (This is a song.)x4
3.
(Dug) Rap C-SPAN. Leave in a police van. Pirate viral idle ideals, jam with a neat band. Applaud fraud baby. Nobody gets me, the world's cold like the delicious refreshing taste of fuck that nevermind. (PEPSI) Another pornographic fantasy anthem about how you can quit your job. And I'll retire at 30, dead, a roadie for the Dirty Heads. Kickstarter my heart, I've got some references you'll recognize. I'll sweat respect to death and buy some eyebrows that look less surprised. Aphorisms, Lizzy Marie. That's the queen of England. Doesn't matter. That no, no, not the dog from Up. No I mean Dug the rapper. Like, lead balloons at parties for the bands that Zeppelin ripped off. Or how everybody thinks some ex-prison guard is Rick Ross. I hate labels. There's theft detectors under them. And peeling them once stuffed under my sweaters getting cumbersome. Photoshopping coupons, it'd be illegal for me to advise that. So I didn't, if it works, be nonspecific when you write back. We gotta stop being honest with ourselves. Submit to Spotify. Give college the ole college try. Or make millions just being an awesome guy. From now on it's survive or die. Laugh and cry, redact, deny. Try to act adult and teach adults how to do more than act alive. I hate labels. I don't wanna know what I'm eating thanks. Tried cooking for myself which just meant adding weed to pizza cake. I'm a fascinating disaster masturbating to tapes of it afterwards. Making rappers nervous or was that maybe just getting on rappers nerves. I'm taciturn, like I don't really know what that word means. Let me borrow your mind. I'm an Email Model Ship. Sending awful pics of tomorrows design. Like, hey, wake up. Everything's broken, discuss. Trust is a kind of fund and we don't have enough. We've had enough. It's venue to venue. And it never ends like Shenmue. Til I rent myself to pay the rent. Or find some comfy bench dude. Cause you can't stop the party. We wrapped the bar in barbed wire. And our tour was so hot, well, it caught Happy Tooth's car on fire. So now we run in Columbus, cause we can't afford bikes. But we're not running Columbus. That's probably Lydia Loveless. Or the Devil Doves, with special love to everyone who's band names hard to rhyme off of that still knows we're in an endless debt to them. And vague complaints for condo honchos cleaning up our dirty town. And ruining it for residents and shutting fucking Bernie's down. I hate labels. As much as I love indie acts. That bar belonged a bar ago when I could focus on bringing dizzy back. Nothingness, yeah gimmie that. It's all that I ever needed. If only for the simple fact it's easier to write that cynic crap. Then to hug abundant sun lit summet hung with names of mountain climbers. My names only on watch lists. I didn't mean literally set the town on fire. It's just an expression. People need love and protection. But not from unchecked henchmen that wanna club and repress them. I hate labels. Matter of fact I hate a lot more than that. But this song was getting depressing. So I figured I'd bring the chorus back. Hordes of cats, distorted facts, and other things you can snuggle with. Enough to forget a troubled past or care how long the bubble lasts. When they privatize the sidewalk my chalk will be spraypaint. Signed, "Basic Causality." Colorful, the way the days ain't. Cause everybody knows the way I say the way it goes, goes. Money talks, I talk louder, I'm completely broke though. Pause to toss the baton on to the empty space behind me and sing a song for dead, but then, for the dying man with a fighting chance. When the nineties finally find me, I'll be hiding in the wilderness. Teaching grizzly bears swear words, and warming my hands with your syllabus. Doing everything in my distaste for power to keep the property values low. So when I'm blasting Kiss, and I don't like Kiss you don't have to ask. Cause now you know. Fuck em if they can't take a joke. Wait, don't fuck em if they can't take a joke. I take all my advice from song lyrics. It's not clear if I care how my days will go. Cause I'm not ready to spend the apocalypse trading stocks of it, but I'll rock with it. Cause I'm not equipped to unlock the cockpit. Or stop the shit. Just document, or ignore. Like I still believe in record stores, and metaphors, and ends to wars, and holy shit guys I'm just not hip I guess. Nor is the majority of popular opinion. Which has never counted for shit I guess. It's attempt the daring until we're dead and buried. It's all temporary bliss at best. But I get it, we're all to credit dependent to sweat it, forget it, nevermind. Cause it's live as if you'll never die, and be remembered as if you'd never died, right?
4.
(Blake) Man I'm the king of these cement slabs. (Happy Tooth) Duckin obligations like they're pretend jabs. (Dug) Out there they chew you like pen caps, you gotta prevent that. (All) Hmmmmm....... Get the fuck up off my porch before I stab you with a fork. There's no need to start a war cause you're just bored of being bored. He's ignored like its a sport. That's a poor form of support. (aw yeah, okay) (Chorus) Stoop kids afraid to leave his stoop! (Happy Tooth) He's been waiting and praying for the best day. Sitting and saving these great things he could just say. He's been waiting for decades and only wants to get paid. Stooping so low and always waking with headaches, Dead face, you could call him a hunchback. He's only scared to leave because hes walking on thumbtacks. Drug bags, and some regular visitors. If he left he'd never come back so he holds the perimeter . (Blake) His cousins got a (you guessed it) blue Cobalt. On the dashboard of course, a suction Kobold. He's got nowhere to go. New lookin shoes, old soul. Every social skill beyond holler and grows mold. So I'm told, haven't seen chief in weeks. He's lonely and struggles in keepin the peace. On Sundays he's out front ready to cheat in cleats. Creeps for weeks and a fantasy's why the sheets reek. (Chorus) (Dug) Everybody tells me that Stoop Kid is stupid. And it's funny those are the same kids he has nothing to do with. A true blue gluestick, reclusive, he sticks around. And if you knew what he knew you'd refuse to do it different now. The stoop moves as fast as the globe spins. And outsides an ocean of cold wind and no wins. No thanks. Stoops stupor super mundane. But the roads are all one way, and every day is some day. (Chorus)
5.
Yo! Wake up! The party's over. Get the fuck off my couch. (Aw fuck, where the fuck am I?) I woke up and everybody had left. I took a half step and tried to catch breath. I'm passed wrecked and I never quit working. I won't be content until the rent's spent, and works burning. I've been rappin, wrapped in the passion, not to cash in fast, and I half grinned at the reaction I had when I took action to grab pens and stab men and kill all of my whack friends. I've had the spins for multiple years now. I hear sound and it gets translated to blank faces and weird frowns. We're down, but I swear we'll get up again. Tell all my drunken friends, to take the rum and gin and learn to fuckin swim in another trend cause our slumps pretend. Like, poverty, robbery, hypocrisy, philosophies of crossed beliefs, constantly talking me into prophecies of dishonesty awkwardly. I'm only getting sadder, I'm only getting weirder. My last words'll be laughter or whatever you hear first. But these ears hurt, and I'm hungry though so I'm running home. I gotta let somebody know we're running low and write another fucking poem about how we'll be unknown until after the guns shown. Running out of patience, running out with bare feet. Ripping up these pages but failures never scared me. Running out of pavement, coming down the airs sweet. Filling up the day's with anything that impairs me. But we can't come home until we're done though. The sun shows what the blood soaked tongue spoke aloud now we're down in the crowd of evil people. Seeking misleading peaceful lethal needles they need still. And I just wanna figure it out but they're sitting us down to get our signatures now. It's getting harder to make apathy romantic. Am I a martyr if I casually demand it? It's all semantics we can't quit analyzing and defining. Trying to find the right thing and die like kings. So I'll write a new song but I'll die with my boots on. I tried to read the bible but that shit was too long. Whose gone? And how do we remove the blood clot? It's tough to pay attention when you're only thinking fuck off. Some cops would probably call us hooligans. But we'll never go to school again. Never needed it to use a pen. One of these days I"m gonna wake up Instead of stay stuck. My paintbrush won't paint the same stuff as these fake fucks.... Wait, what? I'm lost, and sweatin bullets. I don't have to make up problems and depressing bullshit when its everywhere I look and all I'm ever full with. The stomach that ate itself was full of knots. No loose ends. And the truth is.... Everybody's gone. The party's over. Every thing is wrong and you're hardly sober. Alone at last, you're on your own again. With a broken mask and serotonin spent. x2 Tell me all your problems I'll tell you mine. Sell me all your toxins cause Hell's divine. Dwell on what's forgotten and jealous lies. Live life with caution but these cells divide. Ask what went wrong but the well is dry. Half of it is rotten but the smell is fine. Laugh at the option but the helps a crime. End up in a coffin with embellished eyes. I feel like I did but I haven't given up yet. So steal all my shit while I get beaten like a drumset. The sun set and yesterday was like today. I'm wide awake and I just wanna drive away or find a grave in a violent way that feels like a blade. I swear I'm okay. But I'm ending my charade wearing a silent face. The fireplace is an acquired taste. I'll be burning my mistakes inside the flames.
6.
(Blake) Chorus: Lab rat chewin the wheel down to a semi-circle. If your friends a hand, then sometimes that friend will hurt you. If it feeds poison, make it a measured virtue. Squeak til the break of day, that white coat never herd you. Power is a chopping block, you're either the meat or the hand. All the time, it is cast as either you sleep or you stand. That doesn’t account for seat on the can, eating the bland, food, listening to the man, spew, ignoring the beasts mood span. The attitude is set to can do, burning both ends of the candle. want to be back in the wool that the lamb holds. Shit, I will take the hair growth of literally any other mammal. Sans whales, I am stuck trying to convince you out of my ham hole. Dolphins are smarter, but mice are the ruling class. You’re like, nice Douglas Adams reference, I’m all “who is that?!?” These are not the droids you are looking for from your voodoo past. Pretty sure I am walking the world all through the lens of the Hulu glass. The culture war was lost when coffee became a mainstream dessert. Never trust a friend who doesn’t listen when you complain that it hurts. Dug says the collapse came when they scheduled the java break into work. With a healthy fear of success and contentment, I only feel safe on the verge. (Chorus) (Dug) I've got it; I'm taking all of your advice at once. Besides deciding Thai's for lunch, I won't have to live my life for months. It's funny how I'm confident when telling you the happenings Because the consequences aren't there. For me at least, and that's the thing Imagining flapping wings when feeding fish escape plans From that Elvis documentary, 3000 Miles To Graceland Like, am I getting all these tips cause I'm a rad best buddy? Or a crash test dummy? Hell, even if they mean well... Busy stumbling down the drain, I know I'm petty, I'm a heartbreaker and if it makes a decent song, just be glad we aren't neighbors Used to solve most all my problems by simply listing off their synonyms Writing songs to sing while wobbling as a distant voice says "Finish Him" Solidarity is cherishing the others like yourself. But then again I guess my self is someone that I seldom help. I don't understand you, I don't plan to. All I asks return the favor. I've got your back if you've got a back, I popped the latch on my circuit breaker. (Chorus) (Happy Tooth) Lately I've been bed ridden. I look like shit. Stuck, head spinnin. I just listen, while I smoke another cig. Then more things go wrong and I blame the government. Our punishment for making life artificial. Chemicals made me a machine, my hearts a pistol. Take me off this morphine. I wish that I was fourteen so I could go back to more dreams I miss it sorely. This story ends in work beatboxin to machinery. Havin sleep talks and mean thoughts knowin I'll cease to be. Lost in the casino lights, mosquito bites, sativa eyes. Our dreams are handheld we can't tell from these amoeba lives. Rat face chewin through stone for a Svengali. If you've been faulty, take two of these then call me. Losin feeling, probably zombie, leavin seemin thoughtful. Those white coats never even heard you screamin at the bottle. It's all percussive maintenance, they're all just fuckin aliens. I guess I wasn't made for this. They're tellin us what crazy is. In this life, where we break shit to fix it. They're courteous don't worry kids. You're a statistic. I write dope hooks in notebooks cause whats done is done. Not loyal to the topsoil and don't respect a fuckin gun. Less than one is none, and two is one too many. I don't know if this bottles half full or just too empty. (Chorus)

about

This is a the first collaboration and release from the solo rappers Dug and Happy Tooth, without the rest of their band, Happy Tooth & Dug. There's local features from Columbus rappers Blake Ambrose, Jae Esquire, and the Momus. And to top it all off Lethal FX, a beatboxer from Columbus, produced the beats for this entire project.

credits

released March 8, 2016

All lyrics written by Dug and Happy Tooth.
Other then what Jae Esquire, Blake Ambrose, and the Momus contributed.
Additional gang vocals on "Stoop Kid!" by Jack Zackory, and Miles Purdy.
Edited, recorded, and arranged by Happy Tooth.
Beats produced by Lethal FX.
Mixed by Ryan Liptak and then mastered by Mark Abrams at Vaughan Music Studios. Album art by BairBrains. (www.bairbrains.com)

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Happy Tooth Columbus, Ohio

"Both Happy Tooth and BDotJeff spoke to the idea that music can be therapeutic, and writing and recording is now less about reaching a larger audience than steadying the turmoil within. “You do start to question your own motivations, like, why am I doing this?” Happy Tooth said. “And I’ve realized that I love the art, and I have to make it because deep down it makes me feel better.” - MatterNews ... more

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