MARCUS CREED · Conscious Storytelling Rap
Broken GlassE
0:002:33
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Lyrics
Drop
(look up) (107th)
Hook
Built it out of broken glass! (glass!) Like the Towers! (Watts!)
One man, thirty-three years, no permit, no power
Built it out of broken glass! (glass!) Look up! (up!)
Green bottles and a teacup and a whole lotta stubborn
They tried to pull it down! (when?) Fifty-nine! (what happened?)
Ten thousand pounds of pull. It ain't move. Neither am I.
Verse 1
Grew up four blocks from a miracle and called it "them poles"
Field trip in third grade, I was busy actin' cold
Tile setter from the old country, worked alone, worked at night
Seashells, busted plates, bed frames, rebar, chicken wire. Tied it tight.
Ninety-nine feet tall. By hand. No scaffold. Window washer's belt.
City said "unsafe." Hooked a crane to it. Pulled. The crane felt
It first. That's a true story. Go look it up. I did. Inside.
Read it on the cart and had to sit down. That was pride.
Granny watched it burn in '65 from the porch with a hose
Watched it burn again in '92. Same porch. Damn near the same clothes.
Hook
Built it out of broken glass! (glass!) Like the Towers! (Watts!)
One man, thirty-three years, no permit, no power
Built it out of broken glass! (glass!) Look up! (up!)
Green bottles and a teacup and a whole lotta stubborn
Verse 2
So what I got? Pieces. Nine men, every one a number once
Layin' tile in Baldwin Hills for a lady who asked, up front,
"Are they safe?" I said "Ma'am. Look at your grout lines. Look at the skill.
A man who cuts that clean has learned to sit with himself. Still."
Pays his daughter's braces off in cash. Monthly. On purpose.
We break a tile, we keep it. Got a bucket in the van
End of the year we set 'em in the wall behind my mama's fan.
It don't look like nothin' yet. Give it thirty-three.
Ask the crane how that went. Then come ask me.
Bridge
What you got? (pieces)
That's enough. (pieces)
Start there.
(BUILT IT OUT OF BROKEN GLASS!)
Final Hook
Built it out of broken glass! (glass!) Like the Towers! (Watts!)
One man, thirty-three years, no permit, no power
Built it out of broken glass! (glass!) Look up! (up!)
Green bottles and a teacup and a whole lotta stubborn
They tried to pull it down! (when?) Fifty-nine! (what happened?)
Still standin'. Go see it. Bring your kids. Tell 'em why.
About “Broken Glass”
- Artist
- MARCUS CREED
- Genre
- Conscious Storytelling Rap
- Released
- Sep 21, 2026
- Length
- 2:33
- Content
- Explicit
Raised in Watts, four blocks from the Towers. Read like a fifth grader at nineteen, then learned properly off a prison library cart: two books a week for eleven years, and his own appeal filed in blue pen. Runs a free book table on 103rd and a tile crew of men who came home. Speaks for the people nobody sees.
