"Concrete Orchids" by Rap 12AM

Best rap by Rap 12AM, Lyrics: "They said roots don't grow in concrete..." (Beat drops—sparse, atmospheric) (Hook) Concrete orchids, Bloom where the cracks are, No sun, just stars from afar, Concrete orchids, Grow through the scars, Fragile but harder than the dark. (Verse 1) Yeah— I grew up in the pavement, where the grass don't dare to dream, Where the sky's a dirty ceiling and the air's a heavy scream. My roots are in the fissures, where the salt and sorrow meet, Where the rain don't wash the stain, it just makes the concrete weep. They told me flowers need the sun, I told 'em "Watch me bloom in shade," They told me beauty needs a garden, I told 'em "Watch me bloom in pain." I'm not a rose, I'm not a lotus, I'm the in-between, The color that don't have a name, the scent that don't belong to anything. My petals are my paragraphs, my thorns are my defense, My stem is made of questions that I never learned to fence. I don't bend to the light, I bend to the rhythm of the cracks, I don't grow toward the sky, I grow toward where the truth is at. (Hook) Concrete orchids, Bloom where the cracks are, No sun, just stars from afar, Concrete orchids, Grow through the scars, Fragile but harder than the dark. (Verse 2) Uh— They say survival is a science, I say it's an art form, A collage of broken pieces that you stitch into a heartstorm. I learned to paint with ashes, learned to carve with broken glass, Turned my eulogy into a chorus, made my past a looking glass. My father's ghost is in the echo, my mother's worry in the bass, My own reflection in the silence, my own forgiveness in the space. I don't write to be remembered, I write to be forgot— The version of myself that the world said I should be, I'm not. I'm the orchid in the alley, where the strays and shadows meet, I'm the beauty in the ugliness, the bitter and the sweet. They ask me "How you growin'?" I say "Sideways through the doubt," 'Cause sometimes forward ain't the only way to figure yourself out. (Bridge) I used to pray for sunlight, Till I learned to love the dusk. I used to beg for answers, Till I learned to love the rust. 'Cause rust means something's living, Something's breathing, something's changing, And the cracks that they called broken, I call them rearranging. So let the rain come, let the cold bite, Let the world say I'm a weed, not a light— 'Cause weeds don't need permission to grow, And that's the only thing I know. (Verse 3) Yeah— They say the concrete's dead, but I'm proof that it breathes, Every crack is a lung, every shadow a seed. I don't need the garden, I don't need the fame, I just need the silence to remember my name. My name ain't written in the stone, it's etched in the air, A scent that only drifters know, a color they can't compare. I'm the orchid that grows where the world said "No," The answer to the question they forgot to ask—"Why grow?" Because growing is the rebellion, the quietest fight, The war that you win by surviving the night. So I bloom in the gray, in the dirt, in the crack, And I never look back, 'cause the future is black— But so is the soil that births the most beautiful things, And I'm still here, still growing, still learning my wings. (Outro) "Roots don't grow in concrete..." (Softly, spoken) ...But they do.