Night Audit - Xander Voss
west coast hip hop introspective piano and bass 80 bpm f minor Hip Hop, Rap, Conscious Hip Hop, East Coast Hip Hop 2014 forest hills drive emotional honesty late night energy minimal production spoken intro bridge drops to voice only one mc reflective precise no autotune accounting metaphor throughout
Night Audit - Xander Voss
west coast hip hop introspective piano and bass 80 bpm f minor Hip Hop, Rap, Conscious Hip Hop, East Coast Hip Hop 2014 forest hills drive emotional honesty late night energy minimal production spoken intro bridge drops to voice only one mc reflective precise no autotune accounting metaphor throughout
Lyrics
INTRO — Solo el piano. La voz sola.
Three AM. Nobody watching.
This is when the real accounting happens.
This is the night audit.
VERSE 1
Three in the morning and the city finally quiet,
this is when I run the numbers, when I try it —
the honest version, the one with no audience,
no performance, no posture, just the documents,
of what this year actually cost and what it paid,
what I said I'd do and what I actually made,
the gap between the vision and the calendar,
between the man I said I'd be and what I'm handling,
daily — the debts I owe that ain't financial,
the ones to people who believed before the material,
came through — Mama on the phone every Sunday morning,
believing in the music when the music wasn't forming,
into anything yet — just noise in a shoebox apartment,
on Inglewood Ave before I knew how to start it,
she never doubted out loud — that's the audit line,
what do I owe the people who gave me the time.
HOOK
Night audit, running through it all alone,
three AM with every truth I've ever known,
night audit, no performance for the crowd,
just me and what I'm actually about,
night audit, this is where the real lives,
in the accounting that nobody ever gives.
VERSE 2
Asset column: everything the music built,
the catalog, the shows, the deals without the guilt,
of compromising what I knew it was supposed to sound like,
every no I said when the money was around right,
but the terms were wrong — I put that in the plus,
column, 'cause integrity don't adjust,
for the market price, at least mine don't,
liability column: everything I won't,
say in the daylight — the friendships that I let,
go quiet when the schedule got too set,
the homie Dre who I ain't called in three months,
the girl I should've been more honest with once,
when it mattered most — I keep these on the other side,
of the ledger where the daylight can't provide,
the easy justification — three AM don't lie,
the night audit always tells you what you owe the sky.
HOOK
Night audit, running through it all alone,
three AM with every truth I've ever known,
night audit, no performance for the crowd,
just me and what I'm actually about,
night audit, this is where the real lives,
in the accounting that nobody ever gives.
BRIDGE
I owe Roland nothing.
I owe Mama everything.
I owe Inglewood the truth
every time I open my mouth.
That's the balance sheet. That's all there is.
VERSE 3 — El mas corto. El cierre del balance.
Final line of the audit and it reads like this:
I'm still here. I built something. I didn't miss,
the point of all of it — the point was never fame,
the point was: leave something behind with your name,
that meant exactly what you meant it to mean,
and three AM is when I know the count is clean,
and I can sleep.
HOOK — Out
Night audit, running through it all alone,
three AM with every truth I've ever known,
night audit, this is where the real lives,
in the accounting that nobody ever gives.