Knox Hill x Kxng Crooked ft. Samad Savage - My Time (Initial Thoughts & some lyrical breakdown)

Initial thoughts

Missed the premiere :( weird time to have one in general, a Tuesday, and then when I went to check what time does it actually start, it had ended 11min ago :(

His premieres are usually on Thursdays, at 7:15 or 7:30 PM my time. Last one before this was on a Wednesday, and at a weird time as well.

I don't like change. I like structure and routines. When I can predict the general structure of a day or week, because it's repeating stuff I've done before, I relax and feel happier and accomplish things and get creative. I thrive.

I love the beat, and the female voice sample. Definitely The Vibe. Knox was great as always, and I also liked Kxng Crooked, his verse felt like he was telling me a true story... He made me want to listen to what he has to say. Knox has that same effect on me. I'm starting to get used to rappers bending the words to fit the rhyme sceme (like Knox does), but I feel Kxng Crooked did it less, and that makes his verse seem more conversational. Also, they both pronounce words quite clearly and I like that.

The chorus is ok, but not that special. Very mainstream-hiphop-y, with the autotune etc. I like the lyrics of it, though. (After a few more listens, it started to grow on me more.)

Some lyrical breakdown and more thoughts

The clocks tickin, I stop and listen for oppositions / opp's position

My thoughts quicken, they cock the big guns, the plot it thickens

Just came from blocks where a lot don't have a pot to piss in

But they don't listen, they gentrify it and profit difference

Extend the distance

Who's benefitin from mendin fences

These politicians so bent they don't bend for riches

I interpret this in two ways. One is the concrete way - literal big guns, like in the video (it had rifles or some other big fire arms like that) & coming from a poor neighborhood where people have NOTHING. And politicians who don't care that the people have nothing.

Last year I read a book called Rappiotaidetta by Karri "Paleface" Miettinen (the book title is a double - "Rappiotaidetta" means "degradation/decadence art", but on the book cover the letter O is in different color compared to the rest of the letters, so it can also be read as "Rappi o taidetta", which means "rap is art") and it's about the history of Finnish hiphop, and now I'm reading the Finnish translation of Can't Stop Won't Stop by Jeff Chang, which is about the history of hiphop in the USA and I can clearly see why those Finnish teens and 20-somethings latched onto hiphop so much back in the day. Finland doesn't have "hoods", per se, but "lähiöt" aka "commuter towns" come pretty close in many ways. Both are concrete jungles away from the city center, where the city pushes all their poor people and other "problematic individuals", "out of sight, out of mind". And that's where many of the OG rappers, and current rappers, grew up in.

But also, it can interpreted in a figurative way. The narrator feels his time running out, and sees what he's up against, which makes his thoughts race, and HIS MIND is the one cocking the big guns. His mind is attacking itself, he's mentally ill. And a big reason he's suffering from these things is his background.

Look there now they burnin bridges while men are drownin in rivers

They wave while they shippin business, but we are down with the fishes whoah

Very poetic.

The politicians are burning bridges and waving from their boats as men drown in rivers.

"To burn a bridge" is to destroy any means of going back to a certain situation.

The politicians are pushing the poor people, criminals, etc "problems" into commuter towns or hoods, figuratively burning the bridge = any means of going back to a situation where the people in that area could trust anything they say and changing the area for forever with their actions. Leaving the men figuratively drowning there. Then they try to sell them something (ship business) but the men have already drowned.

Also, if someone literally burns a bridge and only sends a boat that costs something or sends the boat too late, a person would drown. And if they drown in a river, that means they're at the mercy of the stream, where the water takes them... There could be rocks, there could be a waterfall. If they don't die because they're too exhausted to stay up float, they might drown because they hit their head or foot on something, or because they fell down a waterfall. Or because the bridge is collapsing on them, or the ship runs them over. The politicians don't care.

"We are down with the fishes" reminds me of the mafia and how they'd make people "sleep with the fishes" aka drown them. I think that saying is a movie reference, but I haven't seen the movie...

I'm from a system where the prisons set from poverty lines

I'm just a product of the products and commodity crimes

There's no appeasing the weak

I need a release

The piece/peace in these streets 

Is when they reaching for heat

But me I'm reaching for shine

I feel Icarus, a wicked twist, I lit the wick

I'm inujured in the devil's grip

"I'm just a product of the products and commodity crimes". Wow. I've thought about this sometimes. Kinda like the "nature vs. nurture" question, except the "nurture" isn't one's upbringing but the products one consumes... Who am I besides the products I consume? Because if someone asks me to tell them who I am, I'd tell them my name, my age, where I'm from, what I do for a living, and then I'd basically start listing products and commodities I like... Hobbies for example. Writing two blogs, reading books, listening to music, playing video games, watching tv shows and movies and YouTube, drawing, writing poetry, occasionally singing, trying to hit the gym twice a week (and failing miserably). This website I'm writing on right now is a product by a company, and I'm writing about music or translating song lyrics, which are products made and sold by artists and labels, books are products by authors, games are products by video game developers, tv shows and movies and YouTube videos are products, drawing and writing require a pen and paper (or an electronic device) to produce things on them, the gym is a company owned by someone. Everything but singing requires products. One's favorite food and favorite drink are products. 

A pretty fucking huge proportion of being a human comes down to the products one consumes, and then one becomes a literal & figurative product of that themselves. Figurative in the sense that everything we put in our brain, gets mashed together and comes out of our brain (as words and actions). Literal in the sense that we are sort of forced to brand ourselves today as well. So we are also products.

But what is the human, who am I, if I'm not allowed to list the products I consume? And because I do consume so many products, am I merely a combination of those products? Who would I be without them, if I had not, for example, ever played a video game in my life? Would I still be the same person I am today? Or would there be something fundamentally different about me if I hadn't played any games ever? Also, is it a bad thing if someone's personality is partially or fully shaped by the products they've consumed in their life? What if they only define themselves based on the products they consume, is that bad? If it is bad, why?

Icarus was a character in the Greek mythology. He had wings made of wax and feathers and he got so caught up with flying he accidentally flew too close to the Sun, the wax melted off his wings, he fell into the ocean and drowned.

The Sun produces both heat and shine (light). While the others in the narrator's home town's streets steer towards violence ("heat" like a heated argument, "piece", a gun), the narrator just wants some hope ("light") and peace in his life.

While many fell to clicks

I'm triggered

Ties back to the "I'm just a product of the products and commodity crimes" and those thoughts, at least in my brain. We sell our personal brand online, where people click on their computer mice and get triggered...

The mouse's buttons are "triggers", they "trigger" "clicks" when you push them.

The narrator is triggered, displeased, not happy, with how many people have fallen (I'd say fallen like Icarus, but our narrator said he's Icarus...) for the search of online fame. Hmm. Or maybe he fell for them as well. Hsi pursuits were different, but what if that made no difference?

I'm sick of the doubt

So out them figures on my head

You'll never figure me out, don't even count

Yes, Knox's brain can be quite puzzling at times. Like almost everyone's, though. We can never fully understand what goes on in another person's brain, no matter how much they try to explain it or how well we think we know them.

I consider myself to have a pretty good gut feeling about people and to understand how most of them think (somewhat, obviously not fully) after knowing them a while. The better I get them and the more "in sync" I feel like I am with them, the more I like them and the stronger my platonic feelings are for them. I guess most people feel this way, it'd sound logical to feel fondness towards people who behave in ways you expect them to, as long as you don't have anything against how they behave. It brings a sense of familiarity and then you feel "at home" with them and like them more. Right? It's not just me?

Some people like talking to strangers and being surprised by what other people say or do, but I hate it. I hate now having a clue how someone will take whatever the current situation is. I am an introvert, I hate people I can't predict at all, whose brain workings make no sense to me. They stress me out and I can't be myself around them.

I feel like I understand Knox pretty well, most of the time, and then occasionally, he still manages to surprise me. Which is fine, it usually isn't a horrible misjudgment in my part, he's just more multifaceted than I had given him credit for. Or when he gets into one of his "I'm gonna do the exact opposite of what I'm told" moods. Granted, that I only know him online, mostly through his music and YouTube videos, and we've only DM'd maybe five times in the past year and couple of months we've known each other. I'd say it's still possible to get to know a person this way, but it's just much slower than it would be in person, or if the relationship was different from what this is (we're acquaintances, sure - he knows I exist, I know he exists - but I know him much better than he knows me, because I see more of him than he sees of me, it's not balanced at all, and that is to be expected when the basis of the human connection is a fan and an artist, but I'm just stating facts - I might not know him nearly as well as I think I do, but he most certainly knows me even less well).

Figures aka numbers, counting numbers.

Running

Race against the clock, know my time is comin

Losin's one thing that I can't stomach

If it ain't first place I don't want it

This can't be the best it gets

Quick to hush a hater or a pessimist

Voices in my head but I won't let em win

It's my time and it's definite

I won't ever miss

"Running" a "race". Also "race", "clock", "time".

"Losin's one thing that I can't stomach / If it ain't first place I don't want it" Why you gotta be the best at everything? That's not a healthy mindset to have. Well, to me it ain't. Some other people, like my best friend, and I'm guessing Knox (being an ex-athlete, a rapper with a battle rap background, both very competitive fields) are very competitive people and for those kinds of people, competition keeps them driven, keeps them motivated in getting better at something. I am the opposite. I hate competition. I prefer no counting points, even better if it's a collaborative effort to achieve a goal or if I operate solo and only have to be good enough for myself. Because I am already my harshest critic and usually, when there's no pressure, I relax and achieve my best results.

But the next bars suggest that this narrator, Knox, is also a perfectionist, like me. I've had to intentionally learn not to be such a perfectionist all the time. I still spell check myself a lot, but i.e. I'm not trying to break down all the bars, and on the ones I do break down, I value my own input in them more than whether they're perfectly dissected down to the bone marrow (<-- just made that expression up).

Like that one person who's read the previous post I wrote about a Knox Hill song already knows, I went through a particularly rough patch with my mental health. And I'm so much better now <3 I feel happy, and like my opinions and feelings matter. Not just to me, but others as well. Even the negative opinions and feelings.

The narrator's in competition with themselves. And he has to win. Only the first place is good enough. He is the hater and the pessimist, the voice inside his head telling him he isn't good enough.

And time is limited. Almost all of us live under 100 years on this planet and we don't know what comes after that.

Put your rollie in your pocket

The jack is a pocket watch

Idk. My online dictionary says "rollie" is a hand-rolled cigarette. Jack is a certain card in the deck. But that's all I'm getting out of this.

And blow armed robbers to Nasa

I walk with a rocket launcher

He doesn't like them?

I don't like them either, but like... That's again all that I'm getting out of these bars.

I awkwardly talk to God

Father, I'm not a monster

I'm a product of this block s***

Snare, snare

I pop s***

Got the drum under the chopstick

On this Knox s***, catchin bodies like a mosh pit

"I awkwardly talk to God / Father, I'm not a monster / I'm a product of this block s***"

I like these lines. He's a product of the environment he grew up in. Like all of us, the experiences we have make us who we are.

I am someone who hates being put on the spot (like competitions, job interviews, etc.), hates the unknown (like changes, and new, unpredictable people), who has suffered from anxiety and depression for 2/3 of their life. And all of this I can trace back to previous trauma in my life. I wish it didn't affect my life and how I interact with other people, but it does. In the good and the bad, though... This is a topic for another day.

And Kxng Crooked has his own experiences that have shaped how he deals with certain situations and he's afraid it makes him look monstrous. He's trying to explain to God he's not a monster. He's just a product of the things he's experienced.

Mosh pit is this group dance thing in metal concerts, where people either run in a huge circle together, or form a circle (a pit) and then people inside the pit push each other and bump into each other. It's considered fun. Like I said, it's a group dance thing of sorts. If you're a decent person, you don't push enough to hurt someone, and if a person falls down, the pit stops until that person has been lifted back on their feet. Despite most fanbases consisting of decent people, many venues have forbid mosh pits altogether.

Under the Moon while the clock tick

That's a lunar tick

You'll get it later, but watch this

Click click pow

Idk what's a "lunar tick", except a clock ticking under a Moon ("Luna" in Latin). And it sounds like "lunatic".

He does say I'll get it later, though?

Oh, and a watch = a clock. Haha. Doubles.

My time's tickin', my mind's different, design's specific

Lines's divine, lines that rhyme with it

It's scientific combine vivid lyrics that make your thoughts travel, your mind's trippin

A one of a kind ticket to your future self

To travel, to trip (or a trip) and a ticket.

If lyrics make you think, aka they make your thoughts travel, it sort of blows your mind like in this meme:

And then you're not the same person anymore, the experience changed you. You're your future self.

Em said Lose Yourself

You chose other people, this time choose yourself

Eminem - Lose Yourself. Great song. Great movie, 8 Mile. Set in a similar place than what Knox and Kxng Crooked have been talking about here, a not-so-great neighborhood. The lyrics of the chorus goes: "You better lose yourself in the music, the moment / You own it, you better never let it go / You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow / This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo" (I've never heard the "yo" in there, but Google says it's there and it fits the rhyme scheme, so... I guess it's there.)

And I feel like those lyrics describe this song as well, they have a similar message. Or at least Kxng Crooked's verse has. Live your life to the fullest, because you only have one of those.

I used to put other people's needs before my own. I don't want to get into details too much as into why that is, as it is very personal, but one big reason is that I was bullied from 1st grade to 8th grade and it broke my self esteem. I had this deeply rooted belief that I just didn't matter as much as other people. It wasn't a conscious thought, most of the time, but in hindsight, that's clearly what I thought about myself. I didn't matter as much as other people and I needed to avoid conflict at all costs, I couldn't show any negative emotions or express negative opinions. And I'm still learning away from that.

I still choose to be a good person. Like, if I have something positive to say to someone, I'll say it. (People sometimes think it's flirting or that I'm "kissing ass" or chasing clout or being fake, but no, it's none of those things. These are genuine compliments, genuine thoughts from my brain. I have just turned off the filter of "I can't say that, it's weird to say that to a stranger!" Old enough not to care if I'm weird. :D) You never know if that one compliment saves their day. It doesn't cost anything to you to say it out loud, but it might have a huge positive impact on the other person's life. If I have something negative to say to someone, I'll consider if it can be expressed as constructive criticism and if it can, do I think they'll listen to me, before I say anything out loud. (Obviously I mess up sometimes, I'm only human, but this is how I strive to act.) In that way, I put more positivity into the world as a whole rather than negativity.

I used to do this to an extent where I suffered for others. I kept my mouth shut about problems I had with them, I bent over backwards to make sure people I cared for knew that I cared for them. Nowadays, I still do good things for other people, like write these blog posts about Knox for example. I'm not sure if he reads these, but if he doesn't, at least his other fans probably get something out of these. Otherwise I wouldn't get any reads on them, and they usually get 20-40 reads, so... Compared to the 0-5 reads per post this blog gets otherwise, that's huge. This means something to the Knox Hill fanbase. So, even if he didn't personally read what I write about him, it's still indirectly having a positive effect on his life. But if this stops being fun for me, I will stop. If I don't like a song, I will not write about it just to make him happy. If I need to work or sleep rather than spend hours on blog posts about his songs, I will (like this blog post - I started it last night after hearing the song, I continued this morning - it's now 9:45AM on Wednesday - and looks like I'll have to continue another time, there's still quite a lot of lyrics left and I have to eat an early lunch in like 15min and go to work).

Knox once said "Only give what you can". He said it to a Patreon member who wanted to give Knox more money than they could afford. But. What I got out of that, is that I'll only give what I can, emotionally and time-wise. Spending too much money on a person has never been an issue for me. Spending so much time and effort on someone that it becomes a burden on my emotional/mental state or affects other aspects of my life, on the other hand, has been. And I'm becoming pretty good at not being a good person to others to the extent it makes me miserable. Only giving what I can, emotionally and mentally and time-wise.

I am the protagonist of my own life. And like everyone else, I only have one. I need to enjoy it and make the most of it. Live it for me and not other people.

It's mind numbing not to find something to live for

Get your justice from that blind woman, your time's comin

On God

Yes.

I just finished watching The Good Place, and even though it's a fictional series, I think how they depicted the Good Place on season 4 is what it would actually be like. Spoiler alert if you haven't seen it!!

After various trips elsewhere, in season 4 our protagonists finally reach The Good Place, basically Heaven, but it turns out not being perfect. You see, in The Good Place people who got there get to wish anything they want and all their wishes come true. Anything at all that they can think of, they can get. In the series, there was an error in the system, and because of it, no one got into heaven for 500 years. The leadership was highly incompetent. The people who had gotten into heaven were merely shells of the people they used to be, human zombies, because they had used up their ideas on what to do a long long time ago and had no inspiration or motivation to do anything anymore. They lived on short impulses, unable to focus on or enjoy anything.

And the solution they came up with to solve this problem was that when a person felt they were ready, that they had achieved everything they wanted in The Good Place, they got to walk through a gate and achieve eternal peace, become one with the universe.

This solution was a callback to an earlier realization they had in the series, where a demon tried to understand why people bother trying to be good, and he realized one big reason is because they know their time is limited and they don't know what will happen after that. What one's legacy is (=what kind of an impact they have on Earth) and how they will possibly be judged in the afterlife for being good or bad drive them to strive for goodness. And when that demon started to think "retiring", which in the series is basically a demon dying, seizing to exist, he had a brief crisis about it and then after that, he started to change.

So, yes, it is mind numbing if you have nothing to live for, if your life has no purpose or end goal, like the people who were in The Good Place for 500 years. The same thing applies to real life here on Earth.

Lady Justice is a common depiction of justice - a blind woman holding a scale.

Debit-less, no credit fix, where fiends won't fail to misuse

They settled on a corner with magazines, they ain't sell an issue

Magazines have issues. That's about all I'm getting out of this...

Told em not to meddle/metal with it

As the lead excels through tissue

Said that I will never miss 

Ironic I'll forever miss you

Lead and iron are metals. Funny coincidence that I said about Knox's last release, where he also used the word "irony", that if I was a rapper, I'd use other metals in my bars in the same song where I'd be using the word "irony".

Earlier in the song Knox said that he'd never miss, and there were a lot of bars about guns, so by word association I thought not missing a shot, with a gun.

But now it's a double, since he's missing them aka longing for them.

While you was in a cell

I feel I bailed all we had was distance

Then you took a hit your liver failed

But the habit didn't 

Had your inhibitions

I'm so mad I didn't listen

Life was grabbing my attention

Shoulda had an intervention

S***

I think this might be about his cousin, who died sometime in the Fall or early Winter. I don't remember how much he's shared on YouTube and how much on Patreon, so I'm not gonna go into detail as to why I think it's about him.

But looking at the lyrics, I think they're pretty obvious.

Breathe, take a hit again

My mind state at the tip, that shady s*** I hope they miss again

If man invented time then let's rewind it just a little bit

Hmm. Interesting thought.

How we as humans measure time, is a social construct. And our perception of it varies - when you're having fun, it feels like time moves faster and when you're bored it feels like it's moving slower. There's also déjà-vu experiences, where one feels like they've experiences a certain moment before.

But time itself exists naturally in nature, unfortunately. And it still moves the same pace no matter how we feel about it or if we think about it moving.

The Earth spins around the Sun and during one spin around it, it also spins around itself 365,25 times. Humans decided to call spin around the Sun "a year" and Earth spinning around itself "a day". Further classifications of time such as months and minutes are just derivations of those, human-made concepts.

Sadly, we cannot rewind time to save loved ones, or any other reason.

I'm sick of always feeling like a middle man

When death'll take the innocent

And life'll fill the minute in these minute men

Who boss them / Boston master-choose-it / Massachusetts

I've heard of Minutemen, in the Marvel context. But I haven't seen any of the movies they're in, I don't know what they are.

I don't really care for Marvel, I prefer DC. They have Batman villains and Ashnikko's character Astor (so far, there only been one comic book, but at the end it said the story will continue, so...).

Hmm. I wonder what is Knox in the middle of. Since he's sick of being the middle man. He does mention life and death in the next bars, so it might be figuratively feeling like he's in the middle of life and death. Not truly living. Idk.

I didn't even know about the different meanings of Minutemen until just now when I was like "isn't that a Marvel movie?" and googled. But there's other meanings as well, and one of them has something to do with military history in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, so I think Knox's refering to that.

I've been getting into history a bit more lately, now that school isn't forcing me to learn anyone's names and any dates, because I suck at those. Animated YouTube videos and the podcast Drinking Our Way Through History (Ian Taylor and his brother Cooper) are making it more interesting than school did. But I'm still not into military history, it's boring to me. To each their own, just not my thing.

Don't cross with my passion, lose it

It's real / Israel when I pack the jewels-in / jews-in

Passion of the Christ is a movie about Jesus dying on the cross. He was Jewish and lived somewhere in the Middle East (where Israel is as well).

You deal but you b**** usin

Hit crooked now pass the music

I'm lit when I'm wrappin to it

Breathe

Kxng Crooked.

And other bars.