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