The Price of the Door

Lyrics [Intro — spoken, dry, no beat] Fifty-two dollars an hour. Twenty-five years of my life. They billed the client one-twenty. Say those two numbers back to me. Slow. [Verse 1] Twenty-five deep in the deck and they detect a defect, suddenly the resident expert is an expense to correct. I'm the architecture, the infrastructure, everything connected, now I'm severance in a box and a badge they disconnected. Every American on that team walked the same damn day — that's not a coincidence, that's a calendar. Somebody picked the date. And the memo said "restructure," magic word, abracadabra, watch me vanish off the org chart while they onboard my replacement's whole cohort — imported, non-negotiable, and captive — and the gap between our paychecks is the profit. That's the practice. They don't need me to be worse. They need me to be pricier. That's the motive. That's the whole crime. Nothing quieter or nicer. I'm not losing to a better man, I'm losing to a spreadsheet where my citizenship's a line item marked delete. So don't tell me about talent, don't tell me about merit — tell me why the market rate's a secret nobody'll share it. [Hook] Fifty-two an hour. One-twenty on the bill. Guess which number's mine. Guess who's eating still. Three-ninety-one is market. One-thirty-three's the lie. One point five four eight — say it. That's the price. I ain't anti-immigrant, I'm anti-fraud. Pay the market wage or take it up with God. [Verse 2 — DOUBLE TIME, chopper flow, no breath] Documented-itemized-the-citation's-in-the-line, I'm-a-hit-'em-with-the-figure-and-the-footnote-every-time, they-was-tellin'-me-the-minimum-was-limited-and-fine, now-I'm-diggin'-through-the-digits-and-the-difference-is-a-crime — bill-it-out-at-market-then-you-pay-'em-half-a-wage, he-can't-quit-he-can't-argue-'cause-you-holdin'-what-he-stays-for, bench-him-for-a-month-then-you-terminate-the-page, run-it-back-dissolve-the-shell-and-resurrect-it-with-a-name-change. Seven-two-oh-two-that's-a-felony-I'm-namin', six-six-seven-two-hit-the-person-who-was-claimin' — wages-never-paid-is-wages-never-even-stated, so-the-trust-fund-take-the-hit-and-the-whole-thing-gets-vacated. Eight-point-four-times-likelier-to-lose-it-if-you-ain't-'em, that's-a-federal-jury-verdict-not-a-take-I'm-tryna-frame-it, and-they-benched-'em-to-do-it — wage-crime-and-the-race-crime was-the-same-crime-the-same-time-in-the-same-line. Same line. [Hook] Fifty-two an hour. One-twenty on the bill. Guess which number's mine. Guess who's eating still. Three-ninety-one is market. One-thirty-three's the lie. One point five four eight — say it. That's the price. I ain't anti-immigrant, I'm anti-fraud. Pay the market wage or take it up with God. [Verse 3 — slow down, half-time, quiet then loud] Final round. Nailed it. Every panel said I crushed it. Then the hiring manager leaned in like he trusted me enough to say the quiet part with nothing in the way: "You're not Brahmin." Two words. And that ended my whole day. Not a slur. Not a slip. Not a whisper. Not a rumor. Said it like the weather. Like a diagnosis. Like a tumor we both knew was sitting there and neither one would name. In my country. In my language. In my industry. My lane. And he wasn't even nervous — that's the part that never leaves. He did the math on consequences, came back zero. Nothing. Breeze. Pretext costs money. Pretext means you're scared. He wasn't scared of anything. He knew that no one cared. So I read the whole damn rule and found the load-bearing screw — footnote fourteen, footnote twenty, times six, their own math, their own proof. And their number says an American engineer is worth one-fifty. Turns out the guy you priced at fifty-two reads federal register. Sixty. [Outro — spoken, calm, no beat] Three-ninety-one. Minus one-thirty-three. Times six. One million, five hundred forty-eight thousand dollars. That's the price of the door. Comment period closes September twenty-fourth. Mine's already in.