Third Beat

Alicia Keys was the guest on Tuesday’s Colbert Report. She started singing Empire State of Mind. Colbert joined her — with his own set of Jay-z-esque lyrics based on the suburbanite’s view of NYC.

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But even if you saw the show, you probably missed half the lyrics anyway as they went by at lightening speed. God help you if you spent precious time laughing. Here are the lyrics to Colbert’s 4-verse suburban rap, sans a few mysterious words in the final line (don’t thank me, thank whomever invented the “rewind live tv” feature):

I love New York, king of all the cities
Lived up by the Guggenheim ’til I got some kiddies
Moved to Connecticut, bye George Pataki
Drove to the drycleaners, pickin’ up my khakis

Ticket to the Lion King, that show is fantastic
Leave a half an hour early so I can beat the traffic
I can get home really fast, driver rocks an E-ZPass
Land at ??? gas, and the upper middle class.

It should be noted, of course, that this was written from Colbert’s character’s perspective — in that the character lives in CT, Colbert himself doesn’t (but still commutes, and moved out of the city when he got the “kiddies”). Great writing on these lyrics; I fully expected to see DJ Javerbaum thanked in the credits, but it looks like this masterpiece was an in-house job. Color me impressed.