[Intro]

“I Could Have Killed This Judge”
I could have killed this judge—

[Verse 1]

Not with a blade,
Not with a gun,
But with the truth
That sat heavy on my tongue
Like a verdict that never got read.

I stood there—
A Black man in a borrowed suit,
Threads stitched with hope and desperation,
Representing myself
Because no one else would carry my story
Without dropping pieces of me on the floor.

They called it “procedure.”
I called it silence with a wig.

My words?
Interrupted.
My pain?
Objected to.
My fatherhood?
Cross-examined like a crime scene.

And my son—
My son—
Reduced to paperwork,
To schedules,
To “best interests” written in ink
That never once spelled my name right.

I could have killed this judge—

[Chorus]

With every tear I swallowed
So it wouldn’t look like weakness.
With every breath I held
So it wouldn’t sound like anger.
With every memory of my boy
That they treated like irrelevant evidence.

[Verse 2]

They said, “Stick to the facts.”
But the facts are—

He knows my laugh.
He knows my hands.
He knows the way I say his name
Like it’s a prayer and a promise.

What court records that?
What section of law
Defines the weight of a child
Falling asleep on your chest?

I stood there alone—
No barrister voice to polish my grief,
No system designed to hear me whole,
Just me—
And a courtroom that looked at me
Like I was already guilty of something
I couldn’t name.

[Chorus]

I could have killed this judge—
With the history that walked in before me,
With the statistics that whispered,
With the quiet understanding
That justice don’t always wear fairness.

But I didn’t.

[Verse 3]

Because my son—
My son—
Needs me breathing,
Needs me breathing,
Fighting,
Writing,
Speaking fire into cold rooms like that one.

So instead—
I killed the silence.

I killed the idea
That I am less of a father
Because I stood there alone.

I killed the lie
That my voice doesn’t matter
Just because it trembled.

And I walked out—
Not free,
Not whole,
But still standing.

Still his father.

Rodney king music!