🎵
[00:01.42]Southern trees
[00:06.91]Bearing strange fruit (Bearing strange fruit)
[00:12.41]Blood on the leaves (Blood on the leaves)
[00:16.74]And blood at the root, check (And blood at the roots)
[00:21.26]So bleed
[00:23.92]Emit light, rap, or Emmett Till
[00:26.52]I drew a line without showing my body, that's a skill
[00:29.53]Bad to the bone and the grill
[00:31.61]You'd be dead wrong if looks killed
[00:33.48]I'm still on my spill, in the spirit of L. Hill
[00:36.92]Eye on the sparrow, nose like a pharaoh's
[00:40.13]Our bloodline trill for the young and all the lils
[00:42.23]We all gon' get mils
[00:43.68]Talk a lot of game but we get paid to like Jemele
[00:46.65]Was raised upon a hill, the valley's a sunken place
[00:49.89]I'm just tryna build like I came with some kettle weight
[00:52.54]Know I'm a god emcee, 'cause nigga, I made the devil wait
[00:55.49]'Fore I brought hell, you ain't gotta tell me I'm hella great
[00:58.57]I don't speak on it nowadays, I just meditate
[01:01.58]Y'all can have the bars, nigga, I spit hard metal gates
[01:04.78]Henry Louis Gates when I cop me some new estate
[01:07.31]Make room for myself, I'm in a way different mental place
[01:10.63]I keep it real, all y'all look anime
[01:13.17]I'm fine like Anna Mae, black don't crack like Angela
[01:15.86]Black and brave like in the A, it don't come with apologies
[01:18.86]'Less it's Tip and some Andre, when you greet me it's, "Namaste"
[01:22.31]Spread love the Brooklyn way or like marmalade
[01:24.94]No matter if you street street or more like the promenade
[01:27.92]We gotta come together like the corn and the dookie braids
[01:30.67]For the present and future days, I say what I gotta say
[01:33.51]I am Nina and Roberta, the one you love but ain't heard of
[01:36.45]Got my middle finger up like Pac after attempted murder
[01:39.28]Failed to kill me, it's still me, woke up singing Shirley Murdock
[01:42.33]As we lay these edges down, brown women, we so perfect
[01:45.09]Went from field nigga to still nigga, being cropped out the picture
[01:48.55]But we all know who got the juice, my sisters
[01:51.46]Imitating us in all the Hollywood pictures
[01:54.11]And still, they'll never be us, nigga (Nigga)
[01:56.38]I'm from the back woods where Nina would
[01:58.67]Sing about the life we should lead
[02:00.59]A new dawn, another deed, I try to do some good
[02:03.11]I felt more damned than Mississippi was
[02:05.30]They deny Nina in Philadelphia
[02:07.32]And still we persevere like all the 400 years of our own blood, Africa
[02:11.99]Old panthers lookin' back like who gon' come up after us?
[02:14.86]Outside the movies, I make sure before it move you
[02:17.92]It moved me, now bow down to a queen, please
[02:21.34]Survival
[02:23.97]🎵
[02:27.85]Here's to the honey in you
[02:31.30]To the bittersweet in me
[02:32.91]I will shed this blood so romantically, so viciously quiet
[02:37.54]Here's to a moment of silence
[02:40.70]I've poured and poured my soul again, here's to epiphanies
[02:45.14]There was never a we
[02:46.22]There was you all and there was me
[02:47.67]In this war, likely to succeed
[02:49.91]Unlike me to surrender
[02:51.13]Trying and dying to breathe poetry to rise in the light of day
[02:54.92]To subconsciously exist cautiously ascending towards freedom
[02:58.13]Praying for a breather
[03:00.31]Do you see my pain?
[03:04.14]Do I seem like prey?
[03:06.98]Empathy be the reason you're still standing
[03:09.20]We are not the same
[03:10.18]I've lived more lives than you, I have less pride than you
[03:13.28]I'm extraterrestrial, I was created different
[03:17.65]I've been here many times before and I've never been defeated, and still
[03:21.44]I will never be defeated (Defeated)
[04:20.45]🎵