SWAY: You gotta see him, man. He's a spitter.
He's an alligator on the mike, Heather B.
HEATHER: Alligator rhymes!
Oh, man. He's a piranha on the mike, Heather B.
♪ [RAPPING] Paranoid. I go through my day. I can't count how many times I wonder ♪
♪ the true intentions of who surrounds and when we standin' out ♪
♪ I don't know if you're proud to rep me ♪
♪ You're saddled with envy, a coward who just be out to get me ♪
When I first met Token, back when he was 13, I was blown away to see someone so
young with so much confidence and so much determination.
You know, you don't see a lot of 17-year-olds so passionate about one thing.
I would say he borders at a perfectionist level.
He's working and thinking differently than most of us.
His career right now is just mind blowing, to me, because a year ago, none of this,
none of this was like this. None.
Growing up, I always felt like I was real different.
What helped me deal with it was writing.
When asked what he wanted to be, he simply answered "rapper".
One of the concerns of the psychologist who did the testing
was that there didn't seem to be any other possibility in his mind.
This was definitely my dream at that age,
to be performing in front of crowds like this, everybody cheering. That's why it says "Hated
to love," you know, the complete transformation.
♪ Literacy is literally limiting to a living, listening, ♪
♪ linguist licking the lips of the truth. And if I put on a mask, ♪
♪ didn't show who I was, I'd be an artist you strive to be similar to. ♪
There was a point where my anxiety got really bad
and I didn't want to make it a big thing. Like, my family was having other stuff they
were dealing with. I never wanted to be the burden.
LESLIE: So it was suggested that he get neurological psychological testing because they saw
something with not understanding language, particularly expressive language, and of course
the greatest irony is that he lives metaphors. That's everywhere in his stuff.
♪ I've always been a touch strange, Like why you confident you nutcase? ♪
♪ You're awesome in a dumb way. Don't be yourself. ♪
When I was, I think, like, first, second,
third and fourth grade, I was real overweight. I just made a decision I was going to change it.
I would start running. I would just run and run and run...
...until I couldn't anymore.
I lost, I think, like 50 pounds. It was the first moment that I decided that if I
put my mind to something that...
I can get it done no matter what.
♪ I'll switch your hopes. Everybody giving out a mix tape, so? ♪
♪ I don't really ever want to listen though. I will be treating it like a discus bro. ♪
♪ I hit the goal, the trash compactor. When they be tellin my homies to listen to it ♪
♪ I say we can't do it without a bucket in case we pee ourselves out of laughter. ♪
My sister was the first person to introduce me to rap
yeah, from like a wicked young age.
So the three main artists, when I was really young I listened to
was Ludacris, Eminem and Tupac.
Eminem, I think it was just
so real. Same thing with Tupac, the attitude of, like, I don't care and this is me was
just something I was attracted to because I didn't always feel - like, I felt different,
but I wasn't always as confident about it. All my stuff usually gets hated on. When people
in my grade found out, they would just make fun of me and I was just like...
It didn't, it really...it just kind of made me want to do it more.
♪ I'm devoted to start showing you this Token dude will go and spew the coldest, ♪
♪ rudest, dopest tunes when he flows into the vocal booth. ♪
♪ Opponents choose to only duel, I won't refuse. ♪
♪ My takeover's soon the total truth is I'm overdue for the throne, I rule. ♪
I met Token at a park in my town called Seaside Park.
I knew he rapped through mutual friends. I was, like, "Let's spit. Let's do
a little freestyle," or something like that. You know, just messing around.
♪ [FREESTYLING ] And I'm simile metaphor spittin'... can't I verily
let the word kick it. ♪ [LAUGHING] Oh my God.
I was telling them yesterday that we were really about that. In the beginning we
really about the lyrical lyrical – And just the syllables, and
You were, like, "You got 14 syllables rhymed?! What?!"
He was very, very self-disciplined
in his head. Like, I could just tell. When we started to rap, he made me come to his
house to rap. I didn't want to. It's like I thought I wanted to, but when it came down
to really working, he was, like, "You gotta come over. We gotta finish this. We gotta
finish what we started."
So I was going by BDG at the time. He was
going by C-Mitch and our first project we put out was called "Lethal Combination."
♪ They're not ready. When we're coming they're ready for nothing ♪
♪ they don't know they're gonna be abused if they're not loving. ♪
♪ They're not ready. ♪
It was just really interesting to hear. They sound like little chipmunks rapping at
the time, but they had bars. There was some bars in there.
Jon Glass is my mentor from a super young age.
It was definitely weird for Jon when he's bringing, like, 13-year-olds over to
the local ciphers. Little did I know, little did he know that this was about to
turn into this...this big thing.
I had a friend that knew Sway and once Sway heard the music, I mean I was just told that
he was down to have me on the show and I lost my mind a little bit.
Sway has been a huge catalyst for a lot of people's careers in hip-hop.
LESLIE: It became this obsession for Ben.
He was a wreck.
I was rearranging stuff literally the night before and I was
a lot more nervous because I spent so much time preparing.
COLIN: You haven't been sticking to the **** that you were doing before, you know what
I mean? Like, you have so much more, like, melodic, like flow, but it's still, like,
you, you know what I'm saying. Like, I love that and you know that. Like, every time we
bump a new joint in the car, I'm like, "Dude, this **** crazy," but it always has, like,
a newer...I'm trying to explain it. I don't want to say, like, a mainstream sound to it.
It's not, but it's like you're having fun with it.
It was so surreal, I didn't even...I was... I feel like I wasn't even there
and then when that beat turned on, I even blacked out more.
♪ Before I even rhyme, I don't want to be defined by these rhyme schemes of mine. ♪
♪ They put me in a box labeled "too ahead of his freaking time" ♪
♪ "too complex" they don't look deep inside. ♪
♪ 17 designed with the genius mind that could teach the blind to see you fly ♪
♪ on a piece of lined paper in the secret shrine 80 million feet behind ♪
♪ they ain't gonna see my peace of mind they gonna see this piece of mine. ♪
You know, you could feel it in the room, how much he wanted it, how much he loved being
there and how much, you know, how serious he took that opportunity and everybody in
the room, it was palpable.
♪ Rappers all over the Internet say that I'm being too rapidly-rap ♪
♪ but wait till you hear the project, you will see I will adjust it. ♪
♪ I have been summoned to bring this music back. ♪
♪ The cocoon just cracked to the butterflies in their stomach, yea. ♪
The Sway video got 4 million views on Facebook and I was looking at my phone and I did one of these -
like I didn't believe it at all.
Sway, this was a dream of mine, man.
SWAY: There it is.
My man, Token! [APPLAUSE]
SWAY: Tracy, you crying?
TRACY: Yeah. I don't think that's ever happened in my damn three years up in here, but that
came from the most authentic space of your soul, dude.
You know, it did huge things for me. A ton of more people reaching out, a lot of new fans.
The new project is filled with material that I've been wanting to put out, but I didn't
feel like was the time and I feel like I built everything up into this point and I have amazing
fans. But I feel like on some level they don't really know what they're fans of,
and this project answers that question.
♪ I'm the necessary evil when you're telling all your people bout me. ♪