Released: May 31, 2016
Songwriter: Common
[Verse 1: Common]
Hot damn, black America again
Think of Sandra Bland as I'm staring in the wind
The color of my skin, they comparing it to sin
The darker it gets the less fairer it has been
The hate, the hate made, I inherited from them
But I ain't gon' point the finger
We got anointed singers
Like Nina, Marvin, Billie, Stevie
Need to hear them songs
Sometimes to believe me
Who freed me, Lincoln or Cadillac?
Drinking or battle raps?
Or is it God's speed that we travel at
Endangered in our own habitat
Them guns and dope, man y'all can have it back
As a matter fact, we them lab rats
You built the projects for, now you want ya hood back
I guess if you could rap, you would express it too
That PTSD, we need professionals
You know what pressure do, it makes the pipes bust
From schools to prison y'all, they tryna pipe us
'Til your political parties invite us
Instead of making voting laws to spite us
You know, you know we from a family of fighters
Fought in, our wars and your wars, you put a nigga in Star Wars
Maybe you need two, and then maybe then we'll believe you
See black people, in the future, we wasn't shipped here
To rob and shoot ya
We hold these truths to be self-evident
All men and women are created equal, including black Americans
Yeah, that's black America again
[Verse 2: Common]
We go here, we go here, here we go again
Trayvon'll never get to be an older man
Black children, they childhood stole from them
Robbed of our names and our language, stole again
Who stole the soul from black folk?
Same man that stole the land from chief black smoke
And made the whip crackle on our back slow
Made us go through the back door
And raffle black bodies on the slave blocks
Now we slaves to the blocks cause on 'em we spray shots
Leaving our own to lay in a box
Black mothers' stomach stay in a knots
We kill each other, more than the cops
I wish the hating would stop
We are at war, in a battle with us
I know that black lives matter, do they matter to us?
These are the things we gotta discuss
The new plantation, mass-incarceration
Instead of educate, they'd rather convict the kids
As dirty as the water in Flint, the system is
Is it a felony? or a misdemeanor?
Maria Sharapova making more than Serena
It took Viola Davis to say this
The roles of the help and the gangstas is really all they gave us
We need Avas, Ta-Nehisis, and Cory Bookers
The salt of the Earth, they get the salt with sugar
And greasy foods, I don't believe the news
Or radio, stereotypes we refuse
Brainwashed in the cycle to spin
We write our own story, black America again
Hot damn, black America again
Think of Sandra Bland as I'm staring in the wind
The color of my skin, they comparing it to sin
The darker it gets the less fairer it has been
The hate, the hate made, I inherited from them
But I ain't gon' point the finger
We got anointed singers
Like Nina, Marvin, Billie, Stevie
Need to hear them songs
Sometimes to believe me
Who freed me, Lincoln or Cadillac?
Drinking or battle raps?
Or is it God's speed that we travel at
Endangered in our own habitat
Them guns and dope, man y'all can have it back
As a matter fact, we them lab rats
You built the projects for, now you want ya hood back
I guess if you could rap, you would express it too
That PTSD, we need professionals
You know what pressure do, it makes the pipes bust
From schools to prison y'all, they tryna pipe us
'Til your political parties invite us
Instead of making voting laws to spite us
You know, you know we from a family of fighters
Fought in, our wars and your wars, you put a nigga in Star Wars
Maybe you need two, and then maybe then we'll believe you
See black people, in the future, we wasn't shipped here
To rob and shoot ya
We hold these truths to be self-evident
All men and women are created equal, including black Americans
Yeah, that's black America again
[Verse 2: Common]
We go here, we go here, here we go again
Trayvon'll never get to be an older man
Black children, they childhood stole from them
Robbed of our names and our language, stole again
Who stole the soul from black folk?
Same man that stole the land from chief black smoke
And made the whip crackle on our back slow
Made us go through the back door
And raffle black bodies on the slave blocks
Now we slaves to the blocks cause on 'em we spray shots
Leaving our own to lay in a box
Black mothers' stomach stay in a knots
We kill each other, more than the cops
I wish the hating would stop
We are at war, in a battle with us
I know that black lives matter, do they matter to us?
These are the things we gotta discuss
The new plantation, mass-incarceration
Instead of educate, they'd rather convict the kids
As dirty as the water in Flint, the system is
Is it a felony? or a misdemeanor?
Maria Sharapova making more than Serena
It took Viola Davis to say this
The roles of the help and the gangstas is really all they gave us
We need Avas, Ta-Nehisis, and Cory Bookers
The salt of the Earth, they get the salt with sugar
And greasy foods, I don't believe the news
Or radio, stereotypes we refuse
Brainwashed in the cycle to spin
We write our own story, black America again
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