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Grown Ups Are Talking

by Magnum Opus

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1.
Get Poor 03:10
Will this be the year that I go flat broke? I hope you know that you’re my last hope. I’ve been trying to make a living by getting livid at rap shows, eating nothing but rations, spitting nothing but shrapnel, lying on my back listening to Fear of a Black Planet, and nodding along like I understand it. So, I vanished. I got so close, then got ghost, and watched my body wash up on the coves of both coasts. Chose to get thin – still there’s no room to stand up in. Naïve means being able to dream without an Ambien. A party means setting up shop outside an ambulance, and waiting for that goddamn handle to kick in. Off brand, ‘cause we can’t afford Bombay, just bottles of Andre, boomboxes and old rock tapes, or maybe some Tom Waits. Blood money prom dates. Poverty, hombre - if it ain’t honest, I’ll wait. Empty wallets? I’ll say! It’s a beautiful sight. Light a fifty if you don’t know what to do with your life. Close your bank account out. Cop a groove to the mic. Get poor. Get raw. Get frantic. Get nice. In for a penny, in for a pound. Spend your last dollar to this sound. Open your mouth wide and get loud. Get poor. Get down. Believe it, holmes, this the year for leaving homes. Leaving grief alone to weep and piece by piece retrieving back your souls. We’re in a sad, sad state when the state don’t give a fuck about the minimum wage. We’re in a mad, mad world when we can keep up with Kardashians, but not the cartels. I ain’t got the answers, but you can be damn sure, I may be broke but I ain’t broken and I’m ‘bout to get poor. In for a penny, in for a pound. Spend your last dollar to this sound. Open your mouth wide and get loud. Get poor. Get down. In for a penny. In for a pound. Spend your last dollar to this sound. Get poor. Get down. No kidding, I stepped off the grid for one minute, now I got no option but to get poor. And I ain’t worth a damn, but a wall full of framed plans. Amen, eh, man? Get poor. No disrespect to those frozen, and lonely, and coping with seeing their kids have to get poor. This is not what this is. This is making a fist, not giving up, not giving a fuck ‘bout getting rich or getting blisters, getting all your chips and getting all in, not getting swallow up, screaming, calling out
2.
Here come the kid with the Coke-bottle glasses, fat pack of smokes, and a full metal jacket. When the beat drops, I’m known to stop traffic. Calling all rap fans, all rap fans. Kicked in the door waving, like, four Coors. K, I thought I heard you wasn’t drinking no more! Bass fiends like we’re bringing Charles Mingus on tour. Calling all rap fans, all rap fans. To the break-beat freaks with the shell toed sneaks who know their Kool Hercs from their Kool Moe Dees, bum rush the show if there’s sold out seats. Calling all rap fans, all rap fans. Rap fans, this is your last chance to lose it. Stand tall for that hip-hop music. Fist up, ready to rip up the movement. Calling all rap fans, all rap fans. Arison Cain and I came to get naughty, rocking all the ladies at all the best parties, and I bang bang boogie when I’m in the zone. Now here comes Kevin on the microphone. Kevin here and I’ve got that style that makes the boys jealous and the girlies go wild. We’re the M-A-G to the N-U-M. Come on everybody, just clap those hands. Rap fans clap your hands. Calling all rap fans, all rap fans. This goes to those who bump drums by the trunk load. Pour out a cup for Big Pop and Big Pun, yo. Leave your wallet down in El Segundo. If you know all the words and flows of Kurt Blow, Funky Four Plus One, God’s Son, and Young ‘Hov, check Eric B for pres on the ballot when you vote. We’re calling all rap fans, all rap fans. DJ, let’s hear how that record of the year bump. Crank your gear ‘til that shit is cracking out their eardrum. These cats know a damn classic when they hear one. Calling all rap fans, all rap fans. Rap fans, this is your last chance to lose it. Stand tall for that hip-hop music. Fist up, ready to rip up the movement. Calling all rap fans, all rap fans. Rap fans, this is your last chance to lose it.
3.
Magnificent 02:42
Still kicking it. I’m still kicking. Still screaming and swinging, I’m still in it. Still living filthy. Still trying to milk every ill beat dropped for that sweet spot, feel me? Maybe you don’t, but talk shit all you want ‘cause baby, baby, it won’t faze me at all. The level that this cranium’s on ain’t been displayed since William Griffin came in the door. Like Herman Hesse’s Damien, I’m waiting for war, craving the form corresponding with this ominous force. I stay cognizant of the bottomless incompetent of the populace who prominently populate the content. I’m so cromulent, Kirk vs The Romulans, swerving your ad hominems with confidence. Spit a rapid rap, then I spring back for the McConaissance to give these walking dead a little zombiance. Magnificent. You gotta wake up, stay vigilant. It’s a cold ass world we’re living in. Now isn’t it time to get back, and get magnificent? For Christ’s sake, pass the bread. This fast has to end so we can laugh again. Grabbed the mic and flipped the night right on its ass like the Wife of Bath. Might get hyper as a fighter at a title match. When I’m on one, I am like Ron Swanson meets Don Juan. I’m Batman. I’m batshit. Your shit is so damn average. My shit is so Stan Brakhage off a tab of acid. I’m listening to “Mr. Boombastic” by Shaggy in the back seat of a black Jeep, stuffing my face with Fatburger. Classy. If you ask me, this whole rap scene’s like a bad Dream Theater concert where hippie converts hit nitrous balloons ‘til they’re licking concrete. This shit is supersonic. Tommy, can you hear me? Loud and clear. Loop that chorus, and we’re out of here. Magnificent. You gotta wake up, stay vigilant. It’s a cold ass world we’re living in. Now isn’t it time to get back, and get magnificent?
4.
The Drums! 03:15
Picture this: Pitcher on the mound. Casey at the plate. Catcher in the rye. His teeth are grinding from the aftertaste. Grizzled vet sweating as he gradually grabs the bat. Curveball coming, and he winds up for the aftermath. Hypertension. Pulse climbing to a faster pace. Slidin’ into second, but they branded him a basket case. Pragmatic as Brad Maddox. He’s back at it. Droppin’ sick cyphers and baggage like bad habits. Dagnabbit! I’m bass-ackwards. Jessie Spano with Zack attacking her fat burners. Black magic. Flux capacitors. Tony Randall with Tony Soprano’s mass murders. Grab your lab coats. Fire up the gas stove. Pack a hash bowl. Mag Op is in blast mode. Climb a totem pole and download a photo of Lamarr Odom motorboating Odin on a dial up modem. While you’re holding onto a lightning rod, a conductor, shock a motherfucker before you bring him the thunder. Pull the lever and ready steady an Eddie Munster let loose running, coming hungry to the sound of the drums. I don’t have an exit strategy. I just run up and slap an emcee and pray he don’t come after me, and if he want to battle me, he can take a number. I’m a take a bath in my own apathy. I’m practically a pack of jackals dragging half a jagged dragon back through tabernacles where I cracked the manifesto I drafted to let bastards know I never plan to die, and if I’m lyin’ you can drop a needle right onto my iris. Come at my shit? Better hire a typist to write your epitaph, or fight like Dr. Jekyll’s better half, or better yet, bet some fucking cash on my rapper ass, or stagger out like you met Stagger Lee and didn’t pack an axe. Suffering Succotash! Jump up while I bust a rap, or step back and collapse like you huffed some fucking mustard gas. Love to chat, but I’m whiplashing this track properly, honestly bumpin’ like John Bomham just come in and started thumping out the dusty ones on “Whole Lotta love”, but I’m blotto of this blotter and a bottle of rum and in no position to listen as he switches to “Moby Dick” and starts whippin’ with both his mystical sticks, like here come the drums. Fuck it, I ain’t done. I’m a dump a bucket of blood into this double cup of mud, chug-a-lug, and cut a rug in a fugly duster and Uggs in front of the sucker club and tear it up ‘til Arison get up and run amok on this clusterfuck of a cut. Buckle up. It’s Buster Douglas. We’ll slug it out in the suburbs, uppercuttin’ ‘til our knuckles are numb and we’re in the gutter. We’ll be supper when the buzzards come. P.S. give the drummer some.
5.
(no data found/file unreadable)
6.
I’m at the record store perusing the most crucial Caruso tones. Left the rubicon at home. ‘Bout a G overdrawn. I’m on a bender, wide eyes, voice sounding like Bright Eyes through a tape head. I mean, a plague tent, you see. Praying that the vacancy sign inside my iris will dissuade her from the sort of relationship she desires, and a night off to just write off the sight of anything vital is required, despite everything I might of uttered prior. I am a walking fire hazard when I’m Jack-soaked. Antagonistic cats know, “wide birth, fatso!” What part of swerving in a room like I’m Faulkner offers confidence that I could be a lover, let alone a father? Better call the doctor. These “Hills like White Elephant” travails are gonna pale next to years of unquestioned incivility. How’s your company digging misery, and what the fuck ever happened to chivalry? Some guys looks like Lincoln. Some guys look like John Wilkes Booth. Some guys, they throw down and fight. Other guys just sneak up and shoot. Some guys look like John Wilkes Booth. Some guys got a way about ‘em. You gotta watch what you say around ‘em. Try to make you feel safe around ‘em. Snakes aching to just break up out ‘em. Whether it’s the fang of the viper that’s at your tit, or the blade of the knife that’s been idling at your ribs, it’s the same slice of irony ripe with the kind of twist that’ll make a man’s heart skip, stop, then split. Lately, I’ve been thinking my life is like a Scorsese flick. Anyone I’ve trusted has never been who he says he is. A deal with the devil is never what you expect it is. Except it is. That’s the definition of deceptive. Shit. This is part Lee Harvey and part Kennedy. Either way I’m rolling to Dallas and armed heavily. Trying to market art, making partners with arch enemies, remnants of the men that they pretend to be. They’re dead to me. Instead of me they’ll only see the side that comes alive when I’m beside myself with sidewinding agony and anxiety. I guess I had my blinders on. I couldn’t get my mind right. In hindsight, I only felt gigantic in the limelight. Some guys looks like Lincoln. Some guys look like John Wilkes Booth. Some guys, they throw down and fight. Other guys just sneak up and shoot. Some guys look like John Wilkes Booth.
7.
Recalibrate 03:28
Ms. Subterfuge is looking damn cute in her gutter-proof, laced-up butter-pumps, jonesing for that Jack Johnson uppercut that’ll never come. She better learn it while she’s young – most shit is better left unsung. Most shit is dead and done by the time it hits the tippy-t of her bumpy tongue. That mistletoe misanthrope loves to cut a rug, if she can muster up the guts to show her washed out, mascara smeared mug in the club. This ain’t how it used to be in 1991, growing up under the thunder of a vibrant summer sun. Gun powder in her lungs. It was loud, and it was love. Madonna on the boombox. Vodka in the punch. And she said, “this isn’t what I wanted to become, stumbling in at one, and staring in the mirror while I’m drunk.” She’s always staring in the mirror while she’s drunk. Don’t wake her up. She’s done. You gotta put yourself back together. It’s time to rebuild. Back when he was just a bratty little Brooklyn kid, wiping off the puke-warm spittle from his crooked chin, never crossed his grin he’d be sweating getting booked again, “Shook Ones” bumping from the boosted whip he took with him. Oozing through the New York City sewers that he’s cooking in, four horsemen on his rotting corpse like something out a book he read. ‘Til they get their dang old fang, chains, and hooks in him, he’s two fingers up, bucked chest, “fuck the working man!” How’s that fucking working, man? He holds on with his Holy Ghost and swerves it like he’s worth a damn, but he’s not. Oh, well, yo, ain’t nobody perfect, and he’s too busy short circuiting to hear the siren circling. You gotta put yourself back together. It’s time to rebuild. I got nothing to say, but I still want to say it. Guido Anselmi vs the eight hour day shift. Would you tell me if I wasn’t gon’ make it? Chasing bank statements. This “Get Poor” shit? It’s so fake, kid. Face it. I gotta put myself back together. Stitch this track together, I mean, just get my act together. When it all airs out, we can laugh together. So I jump, jump, jumped, missed the jump off, now I’m up nights, dovetailing with the floodlights, drunk and screaming “thug life,” bluffing like a dozen IQ points above y’all. This American Fuck-All still sings love songs. Still means nil but a handful of brag tracks. Mag Op is mad dope. Do I really back that? Mean mugging sad sack. God Plot in the trash bag. Time to recalibrate, rebuild, and get past that. You gotta put yourself back together. It’s time to rebuild.
8.
Dope 02:24
First rule of a turntable fiend? Make sure the needle clean. This is hip- hop opera. Still les miserable. Big Poppa bare knuckle boxing La Chupacabra. Polly wanna vodka marathon until her countenance compares to a Picasso, or a Rothko. Let’s get facetious to a beat, count to three and we can see what sort of ink that I can spill out on the scene. Fuck a slow clap. Bust a rap over a low scream, switch to “Eric B is President,” and never lose steam. People have been calling me the rap James Dean, but that live fast/die young stunt just ain’t me. So people have been calling me hip-hop’s Clark Gable on the turntable. Have faith that I’ll finagle the mic cable ‘til phat rap lines flat-line the ADD addled mainstream. It’s karma Armageddon like Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle on the turntable. First rule of a turntable fiend? Make sure the needle clean. I got a brand new pair of roller skates and takeover breaks that’ll make soldiers quake, like rockets dropping out of an obsolete sky, carnage harder than the ire it takes to be fly. Spesh on auto-palm-pilot, bullying these all-nighters ‘til the dawn. I am on some King of Kong spite fire, despite losing my best lighter, my car keys, everything in my bank account, my best friends, so on. I mean, I’m hard as they thump (let’s get it on), and this beat’s got me believing that I’m Attila the Hun. Fill my lungs with the thrill of the hunt and get fatal on the turntable. I ain’t playing, this is 808 chamber music for caped crusading, chain escaping, heavyweight, creative greats anticipating visions in the shape of razor cadences to save you on the First rule of a turntable fiend? Make sure the needle clean.
9.
Ill Murray 01:22
(Instrumental sex interlude)
10.
I bleed rap music for kids who need rap music, who feel trapped by their own aptitude to crackle through black fuses. Maybe it’s my hubris. When I speak, feels like the roots of a new movement. Call it that because it moves us. Ain’t it about time? Ain’t we been feeling a little cooped up, sick of copping bruises for these jokes that don’t amuse us, punch-line after punch-line, waking up nursing contusions in these unfamiliar rooms with no sign of a conclusion? Big was depressed. Pac was depressed, so if you feel like you got no more oxygen left, and the option to top yourself is constantly a threat, with no “Bombs Over Baghdad” accomplishments met, take a breath – take a lungful. Son, it’s your drumroll. Girl, it’s your night out, have some rum. Let it unroll. Meet the sun with a dumb grin. Twist. Hit the streets. Spit that flow like pumpkin seeds. Chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out like pumpkin seeds. I glow hip-hop for those who know hip-hop is the one, true god on this rock, and she’s so hot, and only feel confident locked inside their space invader vessels with the system cranked and speeding towards her rescue. It’s the feeling that you’re best served burring colder than revenge, your engine whirring like it’s worried like it will come up with the bends. Cracking out like hostesses. “Please pony up for happy mouths, and we’ll meet down at ten o’clock pretend time down at Gatsby’s house.” Chew ‘em up or get chewed up like taffy’s bout to get chiseled into a plaque, plastered on the backs of jackets with spray caps, and raffled off to rabid dogs frothing from the lack of water. Plus their fucking Cappadonna CD’s scratched. So, that’s a goner. And to cap it off these matches can’t catch shit before the catalyst for masterpieces gets CASEVAC’d, or shatter-snapped to atoms that lake avenues to travel back to that old patch of broken homes they call the blues, but truth is there’s another catch. The thunder that’s been drumming in your blood is ‘bout to seep into the rug that really tied the room together, but you see, if you can be a better you, I’ll need to be another me, and spit these nothings out my teeth, like, peace, pumpkin seeds. Chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out like pumpkin seeds. Bet I quake break-beats for 808 fiends who still mainline mainstream rap tracks ‘til their face green. Can I inquire as to what sort of fires you’re tasting? What sort of war-torn edifices effacing? Are you holed up in the basement of your parent’s house just spacing at your Facebook wall and raging at the dying of the day? Are you squeezed into a subway car, and hardly holding back the part of you that wants to give up and just let it go to waste? This is “Amazing Grace” to hum as rusty razor blades get run through bumps at parties where the hearts of young emcees get crushed to garbage. This the sort of song to sing along to when the call comes through that no one, despite all pursuits, respects you as an artist. Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a cliché like life to heed. Might I suggest we convalesce together, rest, let it free? Let it be my medicine, my everything, my better half of what’s to come while I’m still young, this pumpkin seed. May I repeat?
11.
Yeah, I eat words, om nom nom, Noam Chompsky. This the last days of Pink Floyd playing Pompeii. Put away the Pomade. I’m a Dapper Dan man. And our pompadours? Course they’re bigger than the damn amps. Get your damn, dirty ape hands off my tan kicks, or land in a planet of pain, sans limbs. Damage. Damage. Damage. More damage. So drunk don’t even know where the tour van is. So punk that I pretend that I know Danzig, like, “oh my god, ain’t that Patti Smith in a black lim’?” Ain’t that Magnum rapid attack shit orgasmic, underdogmatic, working class classics? Like, Dylan wants his verse back, ASAP, lasso, to regurgitate out his cracked throat, at his last show, to baby boomers booing through a hamlet of hash smoke. Dag, yo, Spesh is some kind of asshole. If you feel like Ted Danson, dancin’, this your anthem. Trip the light fantastic. Make a Makers Mark. Hark, mark my words. If we jump the shark, it’s gonna be on our terms. Lurking in a murdered out conversion van – turbo, Percocets, Klonopins, Diazepam, and channeling The Wicker Man - Nic Cage, world’s worst private dick, known to flip shit and spit take on a first date. How’d it get burned in the first place? Plus I’m hurling like Wolf Gang in that Earl tape off some bourbon, and I’m starved for attention like Star Burns, and err, I can’t remember how this verse goes, wait. What’s the hook, and when’s it gonna drop? I’m an argyle gargoyle wrapped in barbed wire with an armoire chock full of Charizard foil cards, drawn and quartered through a cornucopia of carnage, and embroiled in a boiler room brawl on an oil barge. And I’m Royal Tenenbaum, and I’m bombing at stand-up comedy to audiences yawning and lauding thoughts of embalming me, lobbing tomahawks and piranha comments anonymously. Hallmark of a goddamn good night, honestly. Vamanos in a compact Volvo, bumping Commodores “Brick House” to avoid the ever approaching zombie war. An oddity of enormous proportions - Zoidberg. Vile, and hiring Lionel Hutz as a lawyer. Rap’s Tom Sawyer, boisterous with no regard for poindexters who get pointedly hoisted by their own petard, and loyally deployed on a voyage into the dark. Missed their marks - Groucho, but no cigar. Outro with no guitar and I’m ‘bout to do open heart on an artery clogging harmony harder than Black Bart’s handlebars. Watch how we handle bars - with stamina and abandon. We’re a band apart. What’s the hook, and when’s it gonna drop?
12.
If they’re gonna hang me, better get my best kicks on, the black Chucks with the rips on ‘em, yo, in case I gotta flip on ‘em, New bang, new slang, new script on ‘em. Better butter up the drum kit and slam on the buckets like Animal from The Muppets. Coming to get comeuppance, we can tell that you’ve been suffering from the huffing and the puffing of these thuggish motherfuckers. Can we stop with this misogynistic imagery? Your dick doesn’t interest me. Your weed doesn’t interest me. Seems the industry is ripping at its inner seams. It’s time we intercede. Let me see the energy. This is the sound of an emcee catching his breath. I’m just another verse closer to death. Just one hair shy of a guy with a mark on his neck. This is the sound of an emcee catching his breath. I’m just another verse closer to death. Just one hair shy of a guy with a mark on his neck, so show a little fucking respect. Barreling apparently at four hundred fifty Fahrenheit, and I’m crushing on the fairest pair of tights wearing Paris types to cherish like the stars are out, the moon is full, the air is right. Blaring Biggie out a busted stereo - don’t care tonight. Erudite as the rarest, Russian Nabokovian novelist. Promise this, you’ll listen to more honest shit - Common, Nas, Talib Kweli, Lupe Fiasco, Pac, and shit, hip hop that popped beyond the box y’all prematurely propped for it. This is the sound of an emcee catching his breath. I’m just another verse closer to death. Just one hair shy of a guy with a mark on his neck. This is the sound of an emcee catching his breath. I’m just another verse closer to death. Just one hair shy of a guy with a mark on his neck, so show a little fucking respect. I was an animal before Millie pulled a hand-cannon out on Santa in the store, perambulating campuses, contaminating animated fans with an outstanding, uncanny sense of abandon. Goddammit, let’s all get candid. Jump out our pajamas like a bunch of human canvases, between The Great Goddamn and the fantasy of advocating art as mass insanity and tragedy. You are as much of a masterpiece as you have to be. No, sir, no exit strategy. Nomad, no tracks, no back of me. No pop, no pomp, no pageantry. No elastic. No capacity for wack rappers infatuated with cash, titties, Maybachs, claiming that their flagrancy will save rap. Either we’re a needle in a haystack, or the needle getting scratched on the playback. This is the sound of an emcee catching his breath. I’m just another verse closer to death. Just one hair shy of a guy with a mark on his neck. This is the sound of an emcee catching his breath. I’m just another verse closer to death. Just one hair shy of a guy with a mark on his neck, so show a little fucking respect.

credits

released November 17, 2015

Mixed and mastered by Matthew Corey AKA Matty C Beats.

“What’s the Hook” produced by Zef Bridges and David Bowick.
“Magnificent” produced by whoISTHEMETRO
“Recalibrate” produced by Rob LaVine and Magnum Opus
All other tracks produced by Magnum Opus.
Words and music by Magnum Opus.

Additional engineering provided by Geoff Godfrey. Additional vocals on “John Wilkes Boothe” provided by Crystal Lailla. Additional vocals on “The Drums” provided by Zef Bridges. Piano on “Calling All Rap Fans” performed by Zef Bridges. Bass guitar on “Get Poor”, “Pumpkin Seeds” and “Recalibrate” performed by Justin Macy. Additional vocals on "Get Poor" and "Grown Ups are Talking" provided by Cody Heath and Zack Wilson.

Artwork and layout by Nick Machia.

Thank you to anyone who has believed in us, inspired us, or helped make this album possible. We could not have done this without you.

Special thanks to: Dennis Franz, The San Bernardino Wolfman, Kellar, Ray Kent, The Doo Doo Man, The Horn Lady, The “Gimme Gimme” Guy, “Ravioli Hands” Randy, Tity Boi, Paul Paul’s Goatee, Jimmy “Hats” and Tisseau.

“Grown Ups Are Talking” is a presentation of Play Fur Days brand dog harnesses and dog restraint accessories.

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Magnum Opus

Magnum Opus is a rap duo like no other! Celebrated, decorated, and emulated, but never replicated, the group consists of two chums...just like you! Arison Cain and Spesh to Death are clever lads, emcees of the illest breed who aren't afraid to get their fingers dirty delivering crate after crate of soul-scattering flows over bone-shattering beats, and still be home in time for dinner! ... more

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