Boogie Down Productions’s “You Must Learn”

[Hook]

Just like I told you, you must learn

It's calm yet wild the style that I speak

Just filled with facts and you will never get weak in the heart

In fact you'll start to illuminate, knowledge to others in a song

Let me demonstrate the force of knowledge

Knowledge reigned supreme

The ignorant is ripped to smithereens

What do you mean when you say I'm rebellious

Cause I don't accept everything that you're telling us

What are you selling us the creator dwellin' us

I sit in your unknown class while you're failing' us

I failed your class cause I ain't with your reasoning

You're tryin' make me you by seasoning

Up my mind with see Jane run, see John walk in a hardcore New York

Come on now, that's like a chocolate cow

It doesn't exist no way, no how

It seems to me that in a school that's ebony

African history should be pumped up steadily, but it's not

And this has got to stop, See Spot run, run get Spot

Insulting to a Black mentality, a Black way of life

Or a jet Black family, so I include with one concern, that

You must learn

[Hook x2]

I believe that if you're teaching history

Filled with straight up facts no mystery

Teach the student what needs to be taught

Cause Black and White kids both take shorts

When one doesn't know about the other ones' culture

Ignorance swoops down like a vulture

Cause you don't know that you ain't just a janitor

No one told you about Benjamin Banneker

A brilliant Black man that invented the almanac

Can't you see where KRS is coming at

With Eli Whitney, Haile Selassie

Granville Woods made the walkie-talkie

Lewis Latimer improved on Edison

Charles Drew did a lot for medicine

Garrett Morgan made the traffic lights

Harriet Tubman freed the slaves at night

Madam C.J. Walker made the straightening comb;

But you won't know this is you weren't shown

The point I'm gettin' at it it might be harsh

Cause we're just walkin' around brainwashed

So what I'm sayin' is not to diss a man

We need the 89 school system

One that caters to a Black return because

You must learn

[Hook]

"Alkebulan" is the original name

Of Africa, now stripped of it's fame

It's good to know that in ancient times

Egyptians developed all sciences of the mind

To the point where they ruled the planet

But Rome, Greece, and Persia wasn't havin' it

They attacked, and won the war

But it wasn't enough, they had to get to the core

Cause in that time it was Alkebulan

That ruled religion, politics, and man

In order to destroy the Egyptian race

They had to wipe the sciences from off the face of the planet

So they proceeded to ban it

Then replace it with Christianity

And it's, been that way, all the way to today

Learn what we teach; hear what we say

But here comes the K-the-R-the-S-the-O-the-N-the-E

The BDP and we rhyme intelligently

Let me continue with Theodosyius

A Greek ruler not known to most of us

He, in the fourth century A.D.,

Calls the Egyptians fools you see

Two years later, Justinian rules

Six A.D., was it for schools

As a result, ignorance had swirled

Over Christian Europe and Greco-Roman worlds

This went on for a thousand years

Of ignorance, stupidity, and tears

Now comes the seventeenth century hardness

Europe, began to come out of it's darkness

So Johann F. Blumenbach, a German

Came out of nowhere and started confirming

White supremacy and men of colors

Before this time, all men were brothers

It was Johann, who went on to say

There are five different colors in the world today

That's caucasian, malayan, and mongolian

American-Indian, and ethiopian

Yet, the ignorance gets scarier

He believed whites were superior

According to his idiotic fountain

The purest whites were from the Caucas mountains

J. A. Blofener, and H. S. Chamberlain

Both supported this outrageous racism

This went on to what the master race should be

And why they killed the Jews in Germany

Here is the reason why I'm so concerned

Because you, must, learn!!!!