Well Spoken

(who are you?)
(...who are you?)

Yeah
Certain rooms teach you quick
You learn the script before you learn yourself

Fruit out the window, grown men doing theatre
Wrong slur flying, they ain't care for the detail
Hate don't need research, just a face and a feeling
Small town manners with a rotten little meaning

White cliffs, grey flats, free school dinners
Grammar school tie with the estate still in us
Same little hustle, different institutional lens
The others are cheeky, but me it's evidence

Funny how Dairy Milk turned me into Pablo
White yutes did it too, but mine formed a pattern
One little table where they placed all the usuals
Learnt young, innocence ain't always useful

Some I done, some I didn't, that's the mad bit
After a while, even truth sounds dramatic
So I kept quiet, let the room do the talking

Man, fuck this shit

(who are you?)
(who are you?)

I learnt the room before the room could read me
That's why I move like the walls might repeat me

They clock skin first, let the rest come later
King's English got the whole room gracious
Whole place shifts when the vowels sound safer
"Well spoken" — yeah, I know the translation

Same old script with a cleaner blazer
Big smile on, but the look don't favour
They can't place me, still they rate me
Can't contain me, still they claim me

Now it's boardroom calm with the old block reflex
Handshake firm, still scanning for the subtext
Letters by the name, clean shirt, nice diction
Still see the pause when I don't match fiction

"Where you really from?" comes wrapped like interest
They don't want the answer, they just want the index
Quarter this, half that, mixed-up census
More time, I know less than their assumptions mention

Never had yard in the house like that
Learnt the slang from clips and a borrowed throwback
More Belgian in the bloodline than the flag they handed
But no one sees nuance when the fear gets branded

Akala in my ears, made the pen feel regal
Taught me thought could be sharp and still sound street too
I weren't chasing hardness, I was chasing language
Trying to make sense of the way they arranged us

I learnt the room before the room could read me
Smile too wide and they still don't believe me

They clock skin first, let the rest come later
King's English got the whole room gracious
Whole place shifts when the vowels sound safer
"Well spoken" — yeah, I know the translation

Same old script with a cleaner blazer
Big smile on, but the look don't favour
They can't place me, still they rate me
Can't contain me, still they claim me

There's a science to a stare if you sit with it long enough
Pattern recognition dressed up as common sense
Fear with a school badge
Class with a clean accent
Power with a clipboard
Same play, different entrance

I'm the good one till the room gets nervous
Safe pair of hands till the hand gets searched first
Too polished for the ends, too tinted for the office
Too many boxes, not enough options

But I built from the gaps, that's the point they're missing
Made fluency out of all that switching
You hear confusion, I hear range in the making
Whole life coded, now the code looks expensive

No crown passed down, dad's a wasteman
Just old jokes, cold towns, and learned intelligence
Still came through with the pen and the presence
Turned every label into raw material evidence

(who are you?)
(who are you?)
(who are you?)

They clock skin first, let the rest come later
King's English got the whole room gracious
Whole place shifts when the vowels sound safer
"Well spoken" — yeah, I know the translation

Same old script with a cleaner blazer
Big smile on, but the look don't favour
They can't place me, still they rate me
Can't contain me, still they claim me

Well spoken
Well watched
Well, look what that made