Dear Black Son

[Verse 1] Dear Black Son, there's people you've never met Who fear and hate you for something that you never did And these people are so self-convinced Sometimes they pull the trigger, call that self-defense And in that sad insanity Their fear is realer to them than your humanity But that's their problem, it's not yours Listen to your pop for a second These are the confessions of a father broken hearted Who don't know how to pull his only son out of a target They lied when they said it was the bottom where you started You were a king long before them ships departed You are not defined by anybody else's crimes You don't need to answer for what happens in their minds You are not confined by their imaginary lines You don't need permission to exist with the divine In fact, you don't need permission from no one including me You need not do anything but be, just breathe Whatever you dream let it mean you're free Tears on your cheek never made nobody weak Sometimes we got to grieve let it burn, let it bleed Then let yourself heal, pray to God that it will You've got a spirit that a bullet can't kill That doesn't make it any less real [Hook] They say it takes a man to raise a man You're slipping through my hands like grains of sand And here I stand, tryna wrestle with the hourglass Maybe see how long I can make an hour last Raising a man, who's slipping through my hands like grains of sand And here I stand, tryna wrestle with the hourglass Maybe see how long I can make an hour last Dear Black Son [Verse 2] Dear Black Son, I can't protect you like I want to I never judge you, all I can do is love you And that's all anyone can ever do is love you All I can do is wonder how can anyone not love you? They recognize divine in you So they try to find themselves by defining you They're living in a myth that they don't want to lose And now they're too terrified to face your kind of truth But every single time you shine it's proof that they might've threw a chain around your body, never conquered you They don't always honor you but they love your culture Let me show you how to move when the laws approach you It's best to keep your hands where they can see them And try to understand that you're not even what they're peeping They don't see a sweet kid that loves his little sister Their mind is seeing five hundred years of pictures In fact, they don't visualize a kid They see grown man imagery, mythic masculinity But you are not their fetishes or fears Nor my ambition and tears, nothing can interfere We've got to trust our seeds once we sow them We hold them when they're growing But we never really own them We love up on them, play with 'em, pray for them And cling very closely to them moments [Hook] They say it takes a man to raise a man You're slipping through my hands like grains of sand And here I stand, tryna wrestle with the hourglass Maybe see how long I can make an hour last Raising a man, who's slipping through my hands like grains of sand And her I stand, tryna wrestle with the hourglass Maybe see how long I can make an hour last Dear black son