Queensbridge Forever

Intro

Yeah.

Queensbridge.

This for the real ones.

Still here.

Verse 1

Yo, I breathe the same air as the gods and the grimy,

grew up where the hallways was dark and they'd find me

with a pen and a notepad, the block couldn't blind me,

the streets had a language and the language would remind me —

that every second out here cost somebody something,

every corner got a story, every silence got a drumming

underneath it, heartbeat of a borough that kept running

even when the system had us ducking and we're fronting.

Fuck the politics, I'm speaking for the tenements,

for the children raised on nothing but their own intelligence,

for the mothers who were everything and asked for no benevolence,

just a fair shot in a world that measured them in settlements.

I seen kings get dethroned on a Tuesday afternoon,

seen the brightest of the block get swallowed by the gloom,

seen a friend get carried out before he left his mother's room —

and I wrote it all down cause somebody had to move.

This is Queensbridge theology, the scripture of survival,

every bar I ever wrote was somebody's revival,

every verse a testimony, every hook arrival

of a truth that's been suppressed since before my rivals

even picked up a microphone and claimed to be the realest —

I been in the trenches where the pain is at its stillest,

where the quiet is the loudest and the wound is at its fullest —

Nasir the prophet and the pen is what I builded.

Verse 2

Let me paint it for you vivid like a Basquiat canvas,

Queensbridge in the winter got a cold that's fucking savage,

pipes that burst in January, landlords full of damage,

kids in coats inside the classroom trying to manage.

I was one of them, notebook on the broken desk,

teacher wrote me off, I internalized the rest,

took the dismissal as a dare and put it to the test —

turned the underestimation into bulletproof vest.

Cause this world will try to tell you what you're worth before you know it,

hand you limitations like a gift and make you show it,

plant the seed of doubt so deep you water it and grow it —

I rejected every ceiling that they built and I said no to it.

Illmatic was a young boy's cry from inside the cage,

Stillmatic was a grown man's war on every page,

every album after that a different kind of rage —

refined, deliberate, surgical, a prophet and a sage.

I seen rappers come and go like seasons in the bridge,

seen the ones who sold their soul for nothing but a bid

at relevance — a moment, then they slid back to the grid

of anonymity, forgotten for the things they never did.

But I stayed in the pocket, stayed committed to the truth,

stayed connected to the Queensbridge and the fire of my youth,

stayed when everybody told me I was long past my proof —

cause legacy ain't built on hype, it's built on fucking roots.

Verse 3

Now let me talk to you about the ones who never made it,

the ones whose stories got erased and then placated

with a footnote in a eulogy, a memory that's faded —

I refuse to let the block forget the dreams we cultivated.

Willie, rest in peace, you had the smoothest fucking jump shot,

Ty who used to cipher on the steps till the sun dropped,

the homie who was first in class but caught a bad spot —

the system took him early and the grieving never just stopped.

This is why I rap, this is why the pen don't rest,

cause somebody gotta archive what they never will attest

in a courthouse, in a classroom, in a system dispossessed

of any interest in the lives it left to manifest

in poverty and silence — I'm the voice of every instance,

every overlooked existence, every mile of the distance

between what this country promised and what we got in persistence —

Nas the witness, thirty years and I ain't missing.

Stillmatic was a resurrection from the almost-dead,

came back from the eulogy and put it on the bread —

fed the whole culture when the whole culture was misled,

put the QB on the map and made sure every word was said.

So when they write the history of what this music meant,

when they trace the DNA of every bar and every dent

in the culture — they'll find Queensbridge in the cement,

they'll find Nasir the foundation and they'll know where it went.

Outro

It's yours.

All of it.

The bridge, the pain, the truth, the glory.

Stillmatic.

Forever.

Queensbridge.