Fire in the Booth

"I like you, you're like a tiger" [Verse 1: Akala] Yes, I grew up on the dole in a single parent family Been through a little bit of tragedy Yes I was around drugs and violence before the day that I started secondary And that’s part of it not half of it, get the picture, the rest ain’t necessary Growing up, got a little caught up, but that ain’t even half of my life Also given the knowledge of self, that is all we actually need to survive If you saw me aged 9, reading Malcolm just fine Teachers still treated me stupid Students that couldn’t speak English, they put me in groups with And the irony is some of the first man to give me schooling you would call gangsters I already explained, we know what the truth is They used to say, "Don’t be like me" Yeah I got a name and dough on the street Night time comes, I can’t sleep And that’s the part that rappers don’t speak We don’t hit the road 'cause we are tugs Don’t come out the womb, wanting to sell drugs If we got the right guidance and love Would we fight people just like us? How could I knock the hustle to get by? How do you think I ate as a child? Judge no one, done many things wrong I just don’t boast about it songs But listen to my older bars I was just as confused as you probably are But you grow and you learn, travel and fuck up One too many man you know get cut up One too many man that could’ve been doctors End up spending their whole life boxed up You learn, if you study It's all set out just to make them money No cover, it’s all about getting poor people to fight with one another So its logical that us killing our brothers, dissing our mothers Is right in line with the dominant philosophy of our time But time is a cycle, not a line Comes back around you regain your mind You be ready for the energy I channel in my rhymes Remedy the pedigree, the jeopardy of mine When the world’s this fucked up, lethargy’s a crime We can all fight with our brothers over crumbs Harder to fight the one who makes guns We can all talk shit and get two dollars Harder to be the one who seeks knowledge If we understood economics We’d know money’s nothin’ Think nothing of it Money is a means to get wealth, not the wealth itself And don’t get confused, I’m far from broke All that you see me do I own But I won't hang what I make around my neck I know from where that the diamonds came But I do quite literally own a library That definitely costs more than your chain And businesses, and properties Far from starvin’, I eat quite properly And I don’t care, just said it for the kids Who need to know that you’re not broke to listen Don’t know an asset from a liability They’ve never been shown or told the difference So they don’t change situations Richest man in Britain is Asian That’s significant, not coincidence Asian people build businesses Not by flossin', going out shoppin’ Giving out their culture for everyone’s profit Who run’s Bollywood? Indian people Who runs our shit? So we shake our arse and dance As if racism just upped and vanished But has it? No its right on course You’re beaten so bad, you’re trained to ignore Let me not just make sweeping statements Give me a second, I’ll explain it For small amounts of drug possession there’s more black people in jail in America than there is for rape and armed robbery and murder all put together You can say they’re just locking up tugs Imagine if they locked up every middle class kid that had ever held drugs Oh that’s right, that’d be your kids! Bigger than that, what is going on with this? Prison in America’s a private business They get paid fifty-k per year per inmate by the State, just wait… Also legally are allowed to use their prison inmates as slaves Cheap slave labour, big corporations They come out of jail when they can’t get a job So when we celebrate going to jail We are literally celebrating enslavement Add to that, that the hood that you’re livin’ Engineered social condition that breeds crime by design Where do you think you get your nine? You can say that they’re just black But I like to deal with facts In the 1920s you would’ve found in America, Black towns Prospering centres of economics and education to make you proud But some people couldn’t bear that the former slaves would not just lie down So the KKK and other hate groups burnt those towns to the ground Killin hundreds If it ain’t understood You think you were always livin’ in the hood? Shit it’s only been sixty years Since they hung blacks and burned em’ And that was so cool They were your pastors' picnic baskets Even gave kids the day off school To go see a lynching; have a picnic It’s fun to watch the little monkeys die Then people act a little dysfunctional You wanna pretend that you don’t know why If your colour means you can be killed And you’re powerless to get justice about it Is it difficult to figure out how you would then end up feelin’ about it? And that ain’t excuses Just dealing with the roots of abuses that make a reality Where a generation of young men speak of ourselves as dirt casually That’s America, this Britain Some things are similar, some different In this country the first enslaved were the working class What’s changed? Worst jobs, worst conditions Worst taxed, look where you’re livin’ You go to the pub, Friday night You will fight with a guy, don’t know what for But won’t fight with a guy, suit and a tie Who sends your kids to die in a war They don’t send the kids of the rich or politicians It’s your kids, the poor British That they send to go die in a foreign land For these wars you don’t understand Yeah they say that you are British And that lovely patriotism they feed ya' But in reality, you have more in common with immigrants Than with your leaders I know, both side of my family Black and white are fed ghetto mentality Reality in this system, poor people are dirt regardless of shade But with that said, let’s not pretend that everything is the same When our grandparents came here to Britain If you had a criminal record you couldn’t get in Yet that ain’t protect them from all the stupid, stupid abuses they would be livin’ Kicked in the teeth, stabbed in the street Many times fired bombed our houses Put faeces through our letterbox and of course the cops did so much about it Daily, up to the '80s people spittin’ into my pram 'cause I was a coon baby But of course, that has had no effect on why today we are crazy And none of this was for any good reason They were just dark and breathing To ease the guilt now for all of this treatment Constant stereotypes are needed So if I celebrate how big that my dick is, bricks that I’m flippin’ Clips that I’m stickin’, chicks that I’m hittin’, I’m playing my position But if I teach a kid to be a mathematician, messin’ with the schism How they gonna fill a prison when materialism is nothing but a religion? What do you think we got now in Britain? Just like America, private prisons Prison for profit! That mean when your kids go jail people make money off it So keep environments that breed crime Build more jails at the same time Market badness to the kids in the rhymes As long as rich kids ain’t dying, it's fine! Get em’ to the point where some are so lost They actually believe that if they don’t celebrate killin’ themselves off That it’s because they’re soft Was Malcolm soft? Was Marley soft? Tell me was Marcus Garvey soft? Well? Was Mohammed Ali soft? Nah, nah, I think not! But they want us to think that the road is cool Being on road is all we can do We don’t control the wholesale productions Who benefits from us movin’ the food? Or thinking there’s no way out of road life But Malcolm X used to hustle out on the roadside When Marcus Garvey organised more than six million people With no Facebook or Twitter Why is this something you cannot equal? Shit! One of my homeboys did a ten straight in the box in yard Now, what’s he doing? Passin’ his doctorate, don’t tell me that it’s too hard! Who trained you to believe that you’re inferior? Sungbo Eredo in Nigeria are the remains of an ancient moat Dug 1,000 years ago 20 metres wide, 70 down Round the remains of an ancient town That’s 400 square miles around 400 square miles around Please, please don’t believe me It was a documentary on BBC But we ain’t studyin’ history Too busy watching MTV And MTV said, "Wear platinum" Now everybody wanna go and wear platinum And MTV said, "Pop magnums" Now everybody wanna go and pop magnums If MTV said, "Drink prune juice" You would start hearing that in tunes soon "Hey! Today I wore my Cartier Is it now more important what I got to say?" Oh and I drive a Mercedes by the way So everybody listen to what I got to say Huh, does that make you all happy? Ah but shit my head’s still nappy Think for myself, still some mad at me But on the mic ain’t not one bad as me All of this here’s good for the rhymes Put us in the same place at the same time And it’s clear to everybody that I’m out of my mind Some of these guys are runnin’ out of their rhymes Clear to everybody that has got ears I’m the guy that they just might fear They wanna get near but they can’t have a peer Ah dear I’m hard liquor you’re just like beer Front on the kid for another five years Come to my shows and some cry tears It mean that much to em’, it’s a movement! I don’t speak for myself but a unit Black, white, man, woman, anyone that respects truth we put in Dudes are like no dinner with just puddin’ Yeah you’re sweet but no substance puddin’ You could never ever be with a level on Our songs get outplayed out there in Lebanon We speak for the people properly Not for the old fat guys in offices And the girls love him, it ain’t fair He can’t even be bothered to comb his hair Anyway that’s enough kissin’ my own arse Back to the more important task of being so shower I got half the hood screaming, “Knowledge is Power!” And I ain’t saying that will change rap But I do know this for a fact Right now there’s a yout' on your block With his hand on his cock and his face screwed up Swear he don’t care, don’t give a fuck That he won’t let nobody call his bluff But the words go in Open up your chakra Because once that’s happened there’s no going back Once you start to see what is really happening Who the enemy you should be attackin’ is So read, read, read! Stuck on the block, read, read! Sittin’ in the box, read, read! Don’t let them say what you can achieve 'Cause when people are enslaved One of the first things they do is stop them reading 'Cause it is well understood that intelligent people will take their freedom 'Cause if we knew our power we would understand that we can’t be held down If we knew our power, we would not elevate not one of these clowns If we knew our power, we wouldn’t get arrogant when we get two pennies If we knew our power, we would see what everybody sees, that we’re rich already! But never mind MCs go run for your mummy I’m hungry, I run for my tummy That’s enough, back to worshipping money I’m off, back to the study!