Lupe Fiasco - MS. MURAL lyrics

"If you had to paint the gutter
Which color would you choose?"
Said the patron to the
Painter, the painter said, "The blues"
"Do you act off intuition
Or languish and peruse?"
"More like tap into tradition from
The angle of my mood"
He looked back at his canvas
While strangling a tube
A master of the palette
All sanguine and cool
The music mostly jazz, the jazz mostly old
Punctured by some punk and
Some old smoky soul

An atlas on the trunk from
The land of broken goals
Just a cover and a back that
You open and you close
"Where are all the pages?" The paintеr said
Defanged "I ripped 'еm all out and
Made some paper planes
Fish grease absorbers and
Some origami cranes"
Poured hisself a drink and then
Poured it down the drain
Looked at the empty canvas
Said "I think I have a name
I'll call it 'Gasoline Pouring on
The Flames, '" hah, hah

"I appreciate the visit
This isn't normally allowed"
"Do you consider yourself wild or
Conforming to a style?"
The patron pointed at a pile
"Are those rejections or mistakes?"
The painter said
"That is not for question or debate
Most of what we know as art
Is the projection of a faith
The product of a Pontiff or
The election of a saint
A gift from the read for
The digestion of the can't
A visual garnish for the
Confessions of the frank
Displays of physical carnage make
Connections to the ranks
Goes over very well with

South Americans and Yanks
Not to sound shamanistic
But there's medicine in paint
It gets kinetic if you let it
There's a fetish in it's strength
Martyrdom will call
Russian roulette is in the flanks
And most would pull the trigger if
The weapon's full of blanks
But when there's a pool of sharks
And you step into the tank
That's the pool of art that got
'em headed to the plank
But they fell for the deceptiveness
Of the secularist's complaint
The upheaval of the cathedral into
The edifice of bank
That pile over there is just
The evidence of angst
The failed revival of a perfectionist when
His efforts have just sank
A selection of the waste that
Lacks direction or a base
You lose all of the plots for
The affections of a race

Man does not become superior 'cause you
Connect him to a cape
Nor does become inferior because you
Connect him to a ape
I never wanted my life to be
A collection of some dates
And holiday my days away
And intellectually sedate
It's not really a beef
But conceptually it's steak
Like do genitals and gender
Roles successfully conflate?
The current art world is
Just competitively opaque
It never ceases to amaze
My mouth is medically agape
One day it's raising up the brand
The next it's shredding it to flakes
And the velocity of trends is
What referees the pace
Professionally accept what ethically I hate
So in all of my work
You see this wrestling with fate
Deceiving in the brushstrokes how
Aggressively I strafe

Less like putting on some makeup
More like severing a face"
"Wow, " said the patron with a smile
"That's the most interesting diatribe I've
Heard in a while
How you articulated the nature and
Put it all on trial took it up to Heaven
Then put it on the ground"
The painter asked the patron
"Can you stand up on the pile?
I've had a flash of inspiration
My creativeness aroused"
The model took it's place
The painter grabbed a lighter
Doused the shit in gasoline and
Set it all on fire

We got through the hearts of stone
And the scars for bones
When your heart's unknown
In the arc of Joan, yeah