[Common]
(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 lamb from cheap black smoke
And made the whip crackle on our back slow
And made us go through the back door
And rap for black bodies on the slave blocks
Now we slave to the blocks, on 'em we spray shots
Leaving our own to lay in a box
Black mother's stomachs stay in a knot
We kill each other, it's part of the plot
I wish the hating will stop (war...!)
And the battle with us
I know that black lives matter and 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 rose of the help and the gangsters is really all they gave us
We need Avas, Ta-Nehisis, and Corey Bookers
The salt of the Earth to get us off of 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
You know, you know, you know
One way of solving a lot of problems we got is to let a person feel like somebody
And a man can't get himself together until he knows who he is and be proud of what and who he is
And where he come from, and where he come from
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story
