Released: March 12, 2015

Songwriter: Lupe Fiasco

Producer: 1500 or Nothin’

[Produced by 1500 or Nothin']

[Intro]
War gives value to life by showing it can be taken away
And in a perverted way, those who wage war delude themselves into thinking they create life
Or at least make it meaningful
Thus, using that as a basis for grandiose notions of supremacy
Falsely giving themselves the title of masters of the universe
And gatekeepers of morality

[Verse 1]
Peace trials and living power pleasure over pain
Geiger counters check amounts of radiation in the rain
Biochemical nuke, gas masks and rubber boots
Inhale your last gasp without a Hazmat suit
Terrible, unbearable miracle of the modern scientific
Arms race, chase for the horrific
Manhattan project, man cancelling concept
Catastrophic bomb, a fabric-shattering context
A little boy falling from a metal bird
Followed by a fat man who left behind a leveled earth
Imbalanced challenge to survival of the whole piece
Have seeked to staff the whole planet with their own peeps
A zone beeps of contaminated contents
Atomically activated, saturated beyond its
Limits, to live within its boundaries with conscience
To cancer cells, I'm not totally unresponsive

[Hook]
Cause in the future shock, there where everything's storied
I don't feel like there's anything for me
I hope they put this out
Cause in the future shock, there where everything's storied
I don't feel like there's anything for me
I hope they figure out
This atomic misphilosophy

[Verse 2]
Uninhabitable avenues, third wars in southern latitudes
Mutually assured that it all happens to
International violence leaves us black and blue
Blast us back into the past if attack ensues
A pack-approved tactic fully practiced
On the evil of the axis back in World War Two
The melted lunchbox of a disintegrated girl
Dogs on fire, the mosquitoes, flies and squirrels
Men, women and children have their bones cooked to ash
And their shadows burning to the ground from the flash
And if they didn't pass what's the future, Hibakusha?
You say you need a job, but they won't give it to ya
In the era where they said the greatest evil was that white man
From the reich land, but this was coming from the same people
Who thought that Jim Crow was all 'ight then'
Same thing that kept Colonel Tibbets on his flight plan

[Hook]

[Verse 3]
Nuclear stockpile's America's second largest
The world's most destructive and the world's most heartless
Under the auspices that war will be rendered harmless
And everlasting peace will be in reach if we just bomb shit
Technologically fanatic racial socio-
Economic faux-intellectual fucking nonsense
Dripping with political interludes, typical of a system
Stark raving mad and operating unconscious
Now how do we proceed?
Knowing through the man's fatalism
And probably you'll never leave
A disease trying to cure its own symptoms with disease
Creating an epidemic just to see if it can be
Genuine mistrust of everything but us
Based on artificial evidence, but mostly racists at the crux
Let's pray they throw 'em all out
And I hope I don't see you
Through the foggy field of vision in the fall out

[Hook]

Lupe Fiasco

The Chicago born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco first tasted success when he featured on Kanye West’s hit “Touch the Sky”, a track that shortly preceded his real breakout, his 2006 debut album Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor, and he never looked back. He has established himself as one of the greatest urban wordsmiths of all time, with Genius even dubbing him the ‘Proust of Rap’.

While he’s now regarded of one of the 21st Century’s Hip-Hop greats, he wasn’t always a fan of the genre, initially disliking it due to the prominence of vulgarity and misogyny within it. In his late teens, he aspired to make it as a lyricist. In his early twenty’s, he met Jay-Z, who helped him sign with Atlantic Records in 2005. The following year, he released his debut album (Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor), which was met with acclaim from fans and critics alike, as did his sophomore effort, Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool.

The following eight years of his career saw far less output than many would’ve anticipated. This can be partly attributed to his struggles with Atlantic Records. The executives wanted him to sign a 360 deal; however, as he refused to do so they instead shelved his already completed 3rd album, Lasers, and wouldn’t promote him as they had previously. The overseers at the label also interfered with his music (as they had tried to do with his fan-favorite track “Dumb it Down”); subsequently effecting the quality and sound of his third and fourth albums.