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