Black

Look, black is beautiful, black is excellent Black is pain, black is joy, black is evident It's working twice as hard As the people you know you're better than 'Cause you need to do double what they do So you can level them Black is so much deeper than just African-American Our heritage been severed, you never got to experiment With family trees 'Cause they teach you 'bout famine and greed And show you pictures of our fam' on their knees Tell us we used to be barbaric We had actual queens Black is watchin' child soldiers gettin' killed by other children Feelin' sick, like, oh shit, this could have happened to me Your mummy watchin' tellin' stories about your dad and your niece The blacker the berry the sweeter the juice A kid dies, the blacker the killer, the sweeter the news And if he's white you give him a chance He's ill and confused If he's black he's probably armed You see him and shoot Look, black is growin' up around the barbershop Mummy sayin', stay away from trouble, you're in yard a lot Studying for ages, appreciating the chance you got 'Cause black is in your blood And you ain't even got the heart to stop Black is steppin' in for your mother Because your father's gone And standin' by your children When you haven't proven karma wrong Black is doin' all of the above then goin' corner shoppin' Tryna help a lady cross the road to have her walkin' off Black is growin' up around your family and makin' it Then being forced to leave the place you love Because there's hate in it People say you fake the shit Never stayed to change the shit But black is being jealous, you'd be dead if you had stayed in it Black is strugglin' to find your history or trace the shit You don't know the truth about your race 'Cause they're erasing it Black has got a sour fuckin' flavour, here's a taste of it But black is all I know There ain't a thing that I would change in it Look, black ain't just a single fuckin' colour Man there's shades to it Her hair's straight and thick but mine's got waves in it Black is not divisive, they been lyin' and I hate the shit Black has never been a competition We don't make this shit Black is deadly Black is when you're freezin' in your home And you can't get sleep but never feelin' empty 'Cause you got 20 cousins in your country living stress-free Walkin' for their water, daughter wrapped inside a bed sheet Black is distant, it's representin' countries That never even existed while your grandmother was livin' Black is my Ghanaian brother readin' into scriptures Doing research on his lineage Finding out that he's Egyptian Black is people namin' your countries on what they trade most Coast of Ivory, Gold Coast, and the Grain Coast But most importantly to show how deep all this pain goes West Africa, Benin, they called it slave coast Black is so confusing, 'cause the culture? They're in love with it They take our features when they want and have their fun with it Never seem to help with all the things we know would come with it Loud in our laughter, silent in our suffering Black is bein' strong inside and facing defeat Poverty made me a beast, I battled the law in the streets We all struggled But your struggle ain't a struggle like me Well how could it be when your people gave us the odds that we beat? I mean, fuckin' hell What about our brothers that are stuck in jail? That couldn't bust a bell, they held a bird and gotta live with it Black is being guilty until proven that you're innocent Black is sayin' Free my fuckin' niggas stuck inside in prison cells They think it's funny, we ain't got nothin' to say to them Unconditional love is strange to them, it's amazing 'em Black is like the sweetest fuckin' flavour Here's a taste of it But black is all I know There ain't a thing that I would change in it