Released: August 28, 2007

Featuring: El-P

Songwriter: Aesop Rock

Producer: Aesop Rock

Hunters with their dogs and deer rifles
Thousands of them line the pavement
Like patient pupae waiting to become worms

[Sample: Mr. Lif]
The people are dead, but the money keeps talking keep-keeps-keep-keeps talking
The people are dead, but the money keeps talking, keep
Keeps-keep-keeps talking

[Aesop Rock] + (El-P) + {Mr. Lif}
(Another dark night) Teething I'm marking a beast sheep
Like I walk in front of 39 thieves in a "v"
Smores over warm helvetica brown proper
For the odd God or monster, propped to teleprompter
Wild blue yonder, blue in the face, angel
Blew into the bugles in lieu of the euthanasia
Usually the shooter community chew the corpse
But I see the wolves have already gotten to you and yours
Day of the dead, play the ledge closely
Train a barrel of monkeys to aim at the lowest bogey
Dope the gonzo I've always felt choked socially
Stole the golden fleece with the culture of total nobodies
Earth rised, divided by fighting tribes
All we do is watch 'em waddle back and forth lighting fires
{Money money}
Detonator, wire cutter, pliers
Two cities enter, one is broken up in tiny tiles
And I wonʼt pose arm in the heart of the lionʼs throat
For a photographic token of my primordial growth
You parade around and kill, so damn proud
Like a flatline fetish, had it's feathers fanned out
War taught him symmetry, skipped into it gingerly
Silk worms ping-pong ministry to ministry
Hell's bells every which way the the wind blows
So I bang my head against any wall you can build, go

[Hook: El-P]
Another dark night, another not alright
Another bad ritual, more botched surgery
Better follow the bread crumbs back in fact, urgently
Or waddle through this section where the natives feel "murdery"
Vicinity wander, claim no soul
Never let an anchor drop
Never had a home, never talk to strangers
Never trust a friend
This is the life and the life will not end

Money (Repeat 8x) - - ] Mr. Lif

[Aesop Rock] + (El-P) + {Mr. Lif}
Next time think
39 thieves are quicker than 40 winks...
Raise your drinks
39 thieves are quicker than 40 winks

We're not concerned with the community aloofness
Dude, we're animals, we just go where the most food is
Lower the toast, most formal etiquette is useless
Truth is you're equally expendable if spoon-fed
{Money money}
Money is cool, I'm only human
But they use it as a tool to make the workers feel excluded
Like the shinier the jewel the more exclusive the troop is
Bullets don't take bribes stupid, they shoot shit

(Another dark night)
Calicos tread around the rabbit hole
Weapons to the heavens and arsenic where the carrots grows
Piss warm sugar water, what a summer canteen
Plus burned rubber like "green is the new green"
Rubber neck froze, slows by the multiplex
Rodeo commotion, I'm open to see what culminates
Bougie on the right, left rep rebel force
Both say the feud will prove the parking lot was never yours
Black top pebble wars
Soldiers molded where the jonesʼs every grown-up
Wants decoded came to grow in
No motive, it showed up in gross quotas
Hog barn burner come see if your homes hold us
Eighty-five rattle-trap parked and fancy
You could swear he was stepping out of Comanche, antsy
Let us in the jetty when they jettison the medicine
And paranormal hatchet and cadets to break the levees in
{Money money}
Both know the totem camaraderie
Token of equality, they post it horizontally
Crown the golden loading dock, they crawl to lodge the colony
Half-mast flags, half cabs loiter properly
And sleep the sleep of the just ready on the left
Where the witchcraft spun out of a neighboring sect
With the usual undesirables and the big brother cutters
On the day your name became "This Motherfucker?"

[Hook: El-P]

[El-P]
This-is-the-life (Repeat 3x)
The people are dead, but the money keeps talking - - ] Mr. Lif
This-is-the-life
Talking - - ] Mr. Lif
This-is-the-life
Money money - - ] Mr. Lif
This-is-the-life

Aesop Rock

Born Ian Matthias Bavitz, Aesop Rock was a pioneer in the new wave of underground hip-hop in New York City during the early 2000s. Regarding his name, he

I acquired the name Aesop from a movie I had acted in with some friends. It was my character’s name and it sort of stuck. The rock part came later just from throwing it in rhymes.

Aesop has a solid discography with 8 albums spanning over the course of 20+ years. He started in 1999 by selling his first album, Music for Earthworms, through his website while he was a student at Boston University. He has since gained a cult following and been named one of the best artists of the 2000s. His most successful albums are None Shall Pass, Skelethon, and The Impossible Kid which peaked on the Billboard 200 at #50, #21, and #30 respectively.