This trade wasn't made to be equal

Is it the pain of the past or from the bane of the sequel?

To your grave, there's no way for this day to be peaceful

And you're told to just get along with it

Class traitor, see my face in the papers

Don't ask me again what man I'm forced to have hate for

A mother draped in shame that'll finally take her

And now she's crying on Instagram Live

I complained of the man I thought I became

A little ways from the lanes, I don't remember their names

This pain is covered in an ortolan shame

But it's the same cloth that I clean the blood with

Is there a clue to who grew the cursed youth?

When friends I knew never grew and wound up lost and abused

Neck in noose and it's WhatsApp groups full of half truths

Boys get beat black and blue, and then that video gets sent to you

I won't seal my fate with the weight of others

Reveal your place or displace my brothers

I won't feel no hate or debase our mothers

And I'm not alone here

I won't heal my ways when the days are numbered, or

Steal your place when your race is running

It's just searing pain in the graves of lovers

We're not alone here

The lads from my teens all made peace with their scenes

They gave up on their dreams to move their Ma out the scheme

No silver, gold and green, life above their means

Driven mad by phone scams and every day still spent on Facebook

I get it, I do

Some lost search for the truth

They politically horseshoe youths like recruits

For what died the sons of no scheme?

Relocation dreams levelled by the cruel blue seas

And these cunts will do nothing to greet you, I'm sorry

This city needs a saviour

Pray for the guilty and their cutthroat behaviour

There's rent to pay, so I trade my soul in as labour and stay for the hope of what might be

I make peace with the pugilism behind me, and I gnash teeth at the feudalism arriving

A city that's lost its shape held together by surveillance and vapes

With some distant memory of a better past

Overpriced rent took to task, and Ma's on the frontlines of the boycotts

Now I'm reading comment section politics from genocidal hollow pricks

I'm sick, get me out of here please

I'm thirty-two with acne, thirty-two with no gaff to back me

And everyone else I know seems to feel the same as me

I said, I'm sick, thick prick, get me out of here please

A wasted life of 9 to 5 so we can deal with the squeeze

We seize the means of chronic boredom from the bourgeoisie

Then feel the grip of wasted time just as we struggle to breathe

And when your day ends, and you fall into bed

Hold your face in your hands to fight to hell in your head

And your pray for a change, and then you dream and pretend

Then tomorrow arrives, and you do it again

Because my lads aren't hopping out of cars anymore

My lads don't drink to death in bars anymore

My lads don't dice themselves with scars anymore

We've all got real jobs and we're bored

My friend still watches over me, we found our freedom in the sea

The cold will crush my smoker's lungs just as it forces me to breathe

Pull the air in, call me Donnie Deathwish

New set list and a smack of an empty hearse, what a way to go

But still, I feel the blood of my forefathers through me

I still see their marks that they left in the stone

Would they be ashamed of my moves if they knew me?

For the trades I've made just to stay where I'm from