Mama (Mother)

[Intro]

Together, we're gonna make it

Lord, trouble, we sure can take it

But we're almost home

We're almost home

Yeah

[Chorus]

Mama, yeah

Mother Africa, yeah

(Mother Africa)

May I never forget the beat of your drum, you own a piece of my heart (Piece of my heart)

Your illegitimate son wants to come home, don't you keep me in the dark (Mama, uh, check it)

[Verse 1]

Ayo, my grandpa's darkskinned, my grandma's darkskinned

My other gramp's lightskinned, I wondеr what bites him

Pro-afro pick, pro-Black mix

And it's a whole lot of soul that sold that shit

That soul glows from shore to shorе

I used to stare back at Africa, not really sure

If we gon' make it aboard the Black Star Line

Lookin' back at those who actually got to cross that line

Left America for Africa, Jamaica to Ethiopia

Jamaica changed London and you think something's holdin' us?

That's funny, you could picture every Black man outta Africa lost

Lookin' at every man like this is the cost?

We paid, not the slaves we played

Not the roads we paved, not the goals we made

But the gold we bathed in, died in and stayed in

Now we almost made it back to bein' butt-naked (Yeah)

Man, I can't take it

[Verse 2]

They be like, "Go back to Africa, you porch monkey coon-coon"

Sing another tune, lazy loon, entertain us with your moves

Yeah, we like the things you do, but you're nothing but baboons

We're the sun, you're the gloom, we're the joy, you're the doom

Got a lack of go-getters, see, you're just another nigga

Just a thug with a trigger, plus a slug in that thug

You's a Blood, you's a cuz, you's the mud, you's the dust

You's the rug that we brush our dirty feet on

The rock that we lean on, the labor that we feed on

Without you, we would be gone, stronger than some King Kong

Your knowledge, we can't speak on, your land is what we leech on

You're jealous 'cause you be on, indigenous for eons

The type of stuff I think on, they tell me that I think wrong

I tell 'em that I think right, all my life, we had to fight

Not a piece of this land that ain't been touched by a Black hand

Tryna dodge a ghost face like we Pac-Man, screamin' (Yeah)

[Verse 3]

People talkin' 'bout Wakanda, but what about Rwanda?

Your relatives are probably there skinnin' anacondas (Woo)

Ancestors' bloodstream flowin' through my mantra

Nappy hair, strong body, we ain't smokin' on that ganja

Look what I told a novice

Just because Obama was up in the Oval Office don't mean we all accomplished

I swear I almost lost it

Colonizers, modernizers, we a global market

Queens wearin' weaves tryna look like Pocahontas

Rather like it natural

Like your great-great-great-great-granny in the past, boo (Yeah)

Let me ask you, is Cape Verde such a bad stay? (Yeah)

I'm tryna find out where I'm from in this rat race (Yeah)

They lookin' at me like a bum with a black fade (Yeah)

But little do they know that I'm past great

Castrate every whack thought 'bout this vast place (Yeah)

And make it a mandate that everyone can stay (Yo, Factz)

[Verse 4]

So much lineage this brother's yet to discover

Born to a Nigerian pops and Black-American mother

Got me wonderin' what tribe from my mom's side

Was brought to America to build it for free with their freedom denied?

One side came in planes, the other shackled to the bottom of boats

Yeah, we survived the oppression through a legacy of hope

One step, foot on the soil, transported through the Transatlantic

West Africans in America fightin' for basic human rights

Enduring embarrassment from Angela to Harriet

Burdens of this country, all my forefathers carried it

Deprived of wealth through various generations

Sharecropping and Jim Crow and redlining

Visions of returning to the motherland, I seek to find 'em

This redefining of refinement, revolution incitin'

Protest for rights, travelin' to face dedication at the climate

[Verse 5]

Ayo, my great-grandma was darker than the queen of Mali

Darker than Louis Arm' singin' "Hello Dolly"

Probably the perfect example of a motherland, man

Even though she lived on another man's land

And my fam been Black since my mom had me

We the two whitest Blacks in my family, you can see

My grandpa would be T'd, he light as the master far

Now I'm not light as him, but I mean, we came far

Grandpa's name is our scar, when he say our star

He mean Central African Republic 'cause he that hard-rooted

He went deeper than Alex Haley and Roots went

To realign this family with this movement

Even though we still ain't change our slave names yet

And the Blackest man I never met was Malcolm X and Nat Turner, uh

Brought it back like the stamps on the backs of Blacks hung and burnt up and that was that

No justice, reparations, or apologies (Uh)

And they still tryna build freeways over our properties

I wonder what, what it was before we was in colonies

That made us kings and queens of our dynasties, ayo

[Chorus]

Mama, yeah

Mother Africa, yeah

(Mother Africa)

May I never forget the beat of your drum, you own a piece of my heart (Piece of my heart)

Your illegitimate son wants to come home, don't you keep me in the dark (Mama)

Mama, yeah

Mother Africa, yeah

(Mother Africa)

May I never forget the beat of your drum, you own a piece of my heart (Piece of my heart)

Your illegitimate son wants to come home, don't you keep me in the dark (Mama)