"MET SENSE FLOATING ON A BOAT IN HOLLA-LAND"
Music producer SENSE (Daniel Tiuri Wils, 1985) was born as the son of a Shaman and initiated into mystical traditions like Sufism from an early age. Through psychedelic-induced experiences as a child, he connected with his own personal deities and psychological archetypes – like the wolf – which would later become the foundation for the imagery and symbolism found in Shahmen recordings. His grandmother’s esoteric collection of books introduced him to the teachings of George Gurdjieff, Irina Tweedie, and Inayat Khan, who speak to us in the instrumental interludes and give context to the lyrics of emcee BLESS.
Rapper BLESS (Brandon Lee Stratton, 1985) traveled from Los Angeles to Amsterdam to record an album with SENSE. The two Strangers became close friends and recorded countless freestyles and demos together, during sporadic but intense recording sessions in SENSE’s houseboat recording studio. Here BLESS wrote and recorded the words for Shahmen’s “Enter The Circle” and “All In The Circle” using imagery from Native American folktales and cult films like The Crow (with actor Brandon Lee). His gangster rap-like delivery, deep voice, and incredible flow complement SENSE’s mystical sounds and banging drum tracks perfectly.
Shahmen’s classic album “All In The Circle ” incorporates samples from psychedelic rock records, and sounds from Turkish cassettes, with haunting cello melodies, dark bass lines, and banging drum tracks. Woven into the rhythms are recordings of SENSE’s father’s Shamanic drumming, fragments of authentic zikr rituals performed by his Tarikat, and quotes from spirituals teachers and scholars like Joseph Campbell, George Gurdjieff, and Carl Gustav Jung. The killer production on Shahmen’s “All In The Circle” was perfected by producer SENSE for seven years.
RELEASE INFO | WOW002
ARTIST: Shahmen
TITLE: All In The Circle
FORMAT: Album, Digital.
LABEL: World Of Wils
CATALOG: WOW002
RELEASE: 26 May 2015
GENRE: hip-hop, rap
ALL IN THE CIRCLE | LYRICS
coming soon
[Verse 1]
Fall into the wishing well licking heaven kissing hell
Checking for the wounds from the knives in the eyes of these Jezebels
Sailing past the big cake you can see my ribcage
As a hunger grows the crows kick it where I sit man
Follow down the dark road see how bright my heart grows
Learn from the school in the pool where the sharks flow
All you taste like big fish survival based on fitness
The writers of the Bible, and Darwin paying witness
The Devil’s on my shit list, trying to steal my wishes
Kill my inspiration but its money over bitches
I be on my mission, holding – no slippin’
This is the link that’s always been missing
[Verse 2]
Listen here get it clear, human in the mirror
Watch the sun rise as the stars all disappear
Even the blind boy can see that something’s hidden here
Who can tell what it is, it probably couldn’t fit in ears
But it’s always there comfortable or feeling weird
Hidden in the pit of your stomach, somewhere near
Can you read the lines in your hand and count the years
Like a tree stump or a drunk with a hundred beers
Lined up on the wall, could you count them all?
Or make a fake psychic crack all the crystal balls
See it doesn’t take a mason to break a wall
And to make it fall I build up off the call
To give it all until the point that the all is gone
Somehow a garden’s grown up in this heart of stone
Find surviving wrapped all around my bones
Lungs are leaves I breathe in the breeze that is blowing
Flowers bloom out my veins till the pain is gone
[Verse]
And it’s been twenty something years
Growing up upon this planet
Tryin’ to learn the way the world turns
And how I’m going to manage
Without carrying a ton
And get to bandage up the damage
Heart made of flesh but my head is made of granite rock
I’m just a man in a box
Except I got a couple of windows and a door that locks
And a chair where I sit and collect my thoughts
Unless I come home and find me a Goldie Locks
The grizzly bear that didn’t get no sleep (during the winter)
Now he’s standing high on two feet (looking for dinner)
But the forest just barren the city, it’s the only place left
Populated by humans consuming ’til they face death
All with their different beliefs on who has made them
What does life mean? What’s the right thing?
And when you die are you leaving or arriving?
I take a breath and feel the high just from surviving
[CHORUS]
I know you’re asking of your life what does it all mean
I know I’m asking when I write what does it all mean
These trees grown upon the ground just so I’ll breathe
And you’re trying to name the God creating all things
[VERSE 1]
The weight has been lifted
I buried the knife (buried)
Here comes the elephant carried by mice
Here to marry the mic (marriage)
The one tusk cut dipped in blood
Now dare me to write (dare me)
Watch a murder of crows
Turn into a pack of wolves
And prowl the streets for the feast they owe
Fat sacks and a stack of gold
Get blown and turn back to crows
I hear evil I see evil, but I speak needle
Full of medicine for all of these dead people
Sight beyond sight
Carry the eyes of a dead eagle treading in the twilight
Leather bag of bones browns when the sun is shown
Ten fingers that have touched the globe
Ten toes to the dusty road
One skull made of bone ’bout to touch the throne
[VERSE 2]
Eskimo with an icepick
Chipping icebergs down when I write shit
Priceless life lives off papyrus
High into the sky
Catches fire and falls right into your iris
Wipe the ash from your eyelashes
And follow on the white rabbit
Tonight you might catch it (catch-it)
Been clinging on to madness
But I finally built a kingdom from my passion
So start to divvy up the cash and
I pull the next world wonder out the back alley trash can
A vision everlasting
They try to get em’ but they couldn’t build a prison that would trap him
But in this land here the shaman’s a king
Better follow your dreams or fall deep into the hollow of rings
I’ve gone into tomorrow it seems to suck the sorrow out, I spit my piece
[VERSE 3]
Wake up face up with a heart to get right
And the world has gone wrong I’m darker than midnight
But I’m brighter than Zeus’ strikes from rolling these two dice
Tell me the world ends well I guess we got tonight
Dance on my own grave this ground is now sacred
The art, well it takes time my hands well they take bread
The engine in my heart starts to run in on hatred
No one make it far in this world with the faceless
Raise out the graves that get dated to fallen
Goodbye for them now no I’m out for my callin’
Staring out my chips ’bout to push them all in
Standing on the cliffs one slip and I’m falling
[BRIDGE]
I wrote this one on Sunday with no sun rays
Under a grey and blue sky thinking one thing
Be a king by the time that the sun came
Now I rhyme while it shines like gold plates
[CHORUS]
Here comes the elephant carried by mice
Carried by mice, ca-carried by mice
Here comes the elephant
Here comes the elephant
Here comes the elephant
[VERSE 1]
There’s grey clouds out but the day’s still sunny
And the land made of blood and milk and honey
Four walls and a floor and a roof and a door
And a window where I sit and watch the cold world war
Its the mad dash to get cash here while the shit lasts
Say it ends soon so we live fast
Got me buying flowers every other day
Just to pick em all apart and try and smoke em in your face
Want a taste from the river that cleans the sinner
Was in love at breakfast but hate by dinner
Still trying really to balance out the center
But you never get the sweet without the bitter
I pull my hood on when I head out in the city at night
Put my headphones on to a song I can write
Start to freestyle to every little thing I see
Street lights change and the car-horns beep
An old woman sleeps next to a trash heap
Crowd of pigeons gathered up right at her feet
I see comedy, drama and tragedy
Still alive, not a casualty
[CHORUS]
I walked a long cold road and wrote this heat
Just to warm my soul if soul could speak
Watching life turned whole from broken lengths
I want the love and the money and the time to think
[VERSE 2]
When you broke everyday is just a dollar to chase
When you rich everyday is just dollars to make
Don’t window shop but I walk in the bank
Thinking I ought to get all that I can
I know my music ain’t all that’s planned
But this is all that I have
As far as blood sweat and tears I put it all in the pad
And put faith in my strength when I started to rap
Say the strongest survive but its the ones who adapt
So any place on the map I’ve laid my hat
From LA to the dawn to cape town and back
I found my dogs and made my pacts
I made these songs and found my path
I hold the wheel while my soul will steer
As we rode through the globe and flow through ears
See the road’s made of gold it’s grown right here
See the pedals got the force the close comes near
But I’m only beginning to get it clear
Spent years, only writing about the man in the mirror
Been hungry in the concrete jungle full of fear
Now I’m feeling like the hunter on the day he met the bear
Cause the fear of the body bones and heart
A little bit of fear kept the soldier sharp
I sold everything I own to buy this poem
Hoping if I could just own it my money tree would grow
Maybe it will or maybe it won’t
Got a voice with the meaning but I’m still broke
But its all about the change, about the song I wrote
From the day I started hunting with the wolves and crows
Skin the color of bark
Clothes smelling like trees
Dig in my earth, find my roots and weeds
My truth bleeds right back in the arm
No scar, but I left my mark
My friend got clean and O.D.’ed, life is just that dark
But life is just that bright
That when the sunset shines
I seen the graff he writes
I’m back tonight, with a sack to light
In honor of the past I write
I’m wide open, with no glass of wine
Stuck in a barrel, I’ll get better with time
While you measure how the pleasure declines
I’m stackin’ cheddar while the bread just rise
With my eyes and my ears glued here on my grind, cutty
Creepin’ on a come up
No sleepin’ till the sun’s up
Tellin’ secrets to the drum thumps
Pledge allegiance to the blood pump
Until I leak my last liter, here’s my one love
And all these angels got their guns up
But no fear when my teeth and my tongue touch
I am here, and I speak for the young bloods
Who’ve seen the flood, and they drug all the anchors up
And set sail through the world, in the name of trust
Hard work, and the crux that it made in us
I’m ’bout to bust, all my veins full of gold dust
That 1985 California gold rush, in the spine plus the flesh that it holds up
I’m out for mines and my wolves got it sewn up
One crow, one eagle on my shoulders
And my eyes hold the light that approaches
[CHORUS]
If all it took was luck I would already be struck
Yeah caught by the good life waiting to wake up
But it’s more like disaster born as a bastard
Turned into king or the dreams that you’re after
[VERSE 1
These days have been crazed I’ve been raised
In the city of angels that’ve been slayed
Men played the children games with real guns
Cops n’ robbers and cowboys and Indians
I survive to twenty-five in the sun
Under the moon in the twilight with my hearts drum
Beating the same beat my ancestors came from
(And there is only one x2)
Pow-wow circles and peace pipes
Greet a storyteller spelling out the key to life
My shell’s a gun now still I carry them
And my spirit not the dirt that they’re buried in
I’ve grown very thin living off of bread and water
Books, paintings, film and sex (and the marijuana)
And the music that’s been therapeutic for the trauma
My songs bring me clarity they also make me wander
Now I’m standing in the London fog
I think I Lost Angeles and I smell the smog
My mind drifts to Amsterdam I see the dawn
I’m in my beach house in Cape Town then flash it’s gone
[CHORUS]
If all it took was luck I would already be struck
Yeah caught by the good life waiting to wake up
But it’s more like disaster born as a bastard
Turned into king or the dreams that you’re after
[VERSE 2]
Rats n’ mice with wings circle above
Pigeon or dove, who even really gives a fuck?
The names that you call for it all
Hear me grunt about the things I saw (I can still see em’)
A careful widening rings a being
Bare feet on the hardwood floor
About to kiss the ceiling
I’m sick of kneeling I need a prayer I can walk through
Into the house built from everything I thought I ruined
Ifsthis the house where the couch at?
I’m trying to smoke a sack and write raps
Cut an opening above where the mics at
But sunlight slips right past
I wrote the illest shit you’ve never heard
Then left it in the street as an offering
Underneath the wing of a dead bird
Gemini be the shepherd and the herd
Both sides, deep down in the same spine
Should’ve fallen by the waste side
But I crawled out bass side
I spit wine through the grape vine
Here’s the hope that my faith dies
I see the rope that it hangs by
[VERSE 1]
Sunrise the grind starts to make bank
Sun sets to drive home on an empty tank
The in between just gets lost in puffing dank
Jean-Michel Basquiat but I don’t touch the paint
22 years here in the shell now
(Time is right, yeah I’m breaking out the cell now)
And I’ll admit that I crack the whip
But I ain’t even made half the shit (Sense did it!)
I just sit back, get high, laugh and trip
The baddest bitch, keeps staring me right in my eyes
And I’m telling her I don’t have the time
She thinks that I’m lying, cause she never met one of my kind
Never been so real on my life, all I do is the mic
Singing like the siren on an island
The brook calling me to write it, the face callin’ me inside it
[CHORUS]
My whole story is a song now
All the worry that would bog me down
Turned to courage like a godly crown
Now I journey for the godly sound
It’s beyond all the law you found (nigga)
[BRIDGE]
The hole in my soul, void in my mind
Drums gon’ feel all my cries
The hole in my soul, void in my mind
Drums gon’ feel all my cries
[VERSE 2]
There’s no holes left for me to hide in
A lion in sight with a hunger for Zion
I wonder at times what’s behind all the science
Hear the words chase for a taste of silence
(Shh)
Pace through the wasteland, blaze 28 grams
Wait for the fate to awaken up a caged man
I was born by the beach in Southern California
Grew up in LA under the same sun Icarus was born from
An angel built the city up on one lung, burned wings, no teeth
Half a heart, one beat, but two feet
Sea-walking like Jesus over Galilee
Seen, the blood loves the bone
You will cry when they leave the soul
Today we are the trees to grow
Tomorrow we are weeds to pull
Write the story, I can see it all
With my name painted on the wall
An urban crow follows on my call
And on a wire, but I just don’t fall
Bitten by the touch, living on the cusp
Dig in to the rhythm, till my vision pulls you up
Summer turned me inside, tunnel was a distant light
Made a hundred just to kiss the mic, the only trouble is the distant dice
Bet double on my hit tonight, from the jungles to the city lights
I’ma bubble up the middle night, with a riddle of my little life
Turned to visions of my endless light, for this prison there’s a key in sight
There’s a secret in my eyes I ain’t never sharing
Peep it if you might, right through the lyrics
Back through my eyes, slide through my spirit
Tie me to the heights
These souls unfold like gold in the cavern
Everything I’ve sown is growing in a pattern
Seven be the home, a poem of my laughter
The candles that I light
Crow up in my mind, con to my heartbeat
The wolf along my side, walking to my heartbeats
Finally my time, tell me this is our feast
Turn back upon my grind
I don’t wanna cry, with all I gotta carry
I just wanna write, ’til all of us are buried
I don’t wanna cry, with all I gotta carry
I just wanna write, ’til all of us are buried
Do you cry out in your weakness, or carry it like Jesus?
Or just wonder where the peace is?
The heart’s beautiful; the brain’s where the beast lives
All these names on a train, and I’m trying to put my piece in
I paid for days, till my pain is raised
This spirit in my lyrics’ phrase
And when it plays let the fire blaze
And remember to the higher plane I came
Dark dark days, come and go fill my heart
Light fades, come and go fill that Ark
I pain, just to go and spill this truth
Now when truth was reality and lost in the challenge
You see, what was out the window
And you was pretending, and I had an info
And we was just listening, all with my kin-folk
Hear me here-ly, here where the cliff’s low
Van Gogh’s crows, over wheat-fields of gold
Forget everything you know
Read a secret, hid it right under-nose
Go ahead and seek everything you want
Everything you want, you already got
This is just a secret I’m mixing in the pot
Everything you want, you already got
This be the secret mixed in the pot
Everything you want, want
You already got, got
Everything you want, want
You already got, got
Everything you want, want
You already got, got
Everything you want, want
You already got, got
The more digging this grave
The more I’m digging my life
The more I’m digging this pain
The more I’m digging the mic
The more I’m looking for life
The more I’m looking for light
The more I’m mixing between
The more I carve with this mic
Yeah
B.L.S… and S.N.S
B.L.S… and S.N.S
We be blessed, yes, yes
[Verse 1: Bless]
Somewhere the sun sets out on my silhouette
Drum-sets pound to the sound in my filament
Deep to the ground every town I be killing it
Pound over ounce I was built for the real in this
Bring ’em back to life with a knife made of healer spit
Fly through my mind it is time that you feeling this
I ain’t gotta lie this is life on the realest shit
Wake up everyday and get blazed ’till the ceiling lifts
Now I’m on my grind and the factory is dealing shit
‘Bout to stash cash in the bag on some illegal shit
But I ain’t got a dime I can hide from the evilness
Every rack I stack take me back to where the demons live
[Verse 2: Bless]
So smoke a sack with the geniuses
Open up and ask where the past be leading us
Try and do the math, and you add what the meaning is
All I do is laugh while the past be leaving us
Sharp on my math as an abacus
Try and slide the wrong way wind up being smashed to dust
We goin’ raise like we Lazarus
Blaze through the game and watch the fame chase after us
Four finger ring reads “KING” can you imagine us
Sitting at the castle where the cats can’t hassle us
Vision the pattern that are living, us
Break ’em down to tatters build ’em back and watch ’em give it up
You know we goin’ get it, punk
Live 22 years just to find the kid in us
All them other years I was clear, I was growing up
Killing off my fears as I steered through the going rough
Veered through the years as my peers started blowing up
Knew I’d be there and gone passed from the soul in us
Treasure turns to trash from the gold in us
But all will turn to ash if I pass what I’m holding from
[Chorus]
This is for the one, raising out the drum
This is for it all, everything is God
This is for my life, shining through the night
This is for the dice, on everything I write
[INTRO]
Anything he does, anything he loves
A brother from another mother sent from the above
[VERSE 1]
I tell it to you honest, this is everything I wanted
Been living in a house that was haunted
Haunted by the fact that I wanna start performing
Locked in a box here for years just recording
Throwing all the knives from the kitchen at my boredom
Gotta cut the cake and I ain’t even got a portion
Took a lot of time but I chose not to force it
Maybe that was wisdom or maybe that was horse shit
All I know for sure is the world has it’s forces
Some of them are hideous, some of them are gorgeous
Something like the smell of roses mixed with rigor mortis
But look into the bright side, past all the horrors
Did it really take, for me to see the day
Someone called it fate, I guess to say the same
How did I meet Sense, was something in the way
Found the beats I needed, but I never could’ve made
[CHORUS]
This world is truly strange, it only gets stranger
The scenery is beautiful, I also sense danger
Gotta make a living, just a writer chasing paper
Try’na tell my story till I’m facing with my maker
This world is truly strange, it only gets stranger
The scenery is beautiful, I also sense danger
Gotta make a living, just a writer chasing paper
Try’na tell my story till I’m facing with my maker
[VERSE 2]
Back when I was younger, thought it was so simple
All I really needed was a couple instrumentals
No pen, or no pencils, just something I could vent to
I would spit for hours about the challenges I been through
Mountains that I climbed and the spirit that is in you
And then the wind changed and the way he would hitch you
Days grew colder, got a lot older
Tried to get high but I still feel sober
Friends and my girl kept calling me a loner
But what they didn’t see was that I really was alone here
Try’na make a plan, only got a couple grand
Listing what I’m missing and I’m checking what I have
Stepping out the door like one day I’ll be back
Hopping on a plane like I wonder about that
Been around the world, already cut 6 continents
Same pair of Vans slip-ons walked all of ‘em
Found SENSE floating on a boat in Holla-land
Ever since then been building and acknowledging
[CHORUS]
You want to play with the cap made of crow feather?
Better know better, better know better
[VERSE]
Shahmen
Can I solve all my problems
Living out in peace in a world turned rotten
Smelling like trees with a mouth full of cotton
Brewing green tea while I think about my options
Shahmen
Can I solve all my problems
Living out in peace in a world turned rotten
Pen for a sword pe-pen for a sword got a pen for a sword
Got a book for a shotgun
Shahmen
Walked it long before I talked it
Break into a freestyle cypher and lock it
Whether I got paper it’ll end up in my pocket
Don’t matter crow feather hunt and gather
Shahmen
With my tribes still scattered
Across the whole world unified in a pattern
Seen from the heights way past Jacob’s ladder
Don’t matter crow feather hunt and gather
[CHORUS]
You want to play with the cap made of crow feather?
Better know better, better know better