Claiming the City

[Intro]

Life moves pretty fast

You don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it

[Verse 1: Ka.lil (aka Khingz) of Abyssinian Creole]

Look, I've been away from my city, the city's changes ain't pretty

Babies still playing in ditchy forgotten corners

The city's forgotten its warriors

Who died young

Eyes hating the sun that's shining before us

How rotten bodies fertilizing the forest of concrete and glass

Foul hearted police aiming their gats

My head hang over beats

I hope my ghosts stay in the past

And days I couldn't play to the pad

We the same kids they'd be sending to invade Iraq

And "make it safe" with crack

I got that Gray Goose and OJ in a glass

The last day before my cousin hit the pen

Down to swing

I came back to the town just to be down with the king

And loving surroundings it seems

Just then he find out his baby cousin fell off a balcony

Images of a violent paradise is drowning me

Lost souls and I can't let go or tell no

The same scenario that rules South Othello

Black, Browns and yellow

Southsiders tell the devil "hello"

And heaven "bye"

And it hurts too much to ask why

[Hook: Abyssinian Creole]

From the places with plenty

To the space with no pity

The forces changing our city

One day at a time

If I don't change what's been given

What can I say to my children

Who gonna be claiming this city

One day...

[Verse 2: Macklemore]

I grew up on Capitol Hill

With two parents and two cars

They had a beautiful marriage

We even had a swing set in our yard

My mom didn't have a job, because my dad made enough

Money that we could live comfortably and he could support us

Now, he'd commute to Tacoma, so we knew we'd be good

But then I realized everybody looked just like me in my neighborhood

I'd go to school, which was diverse

But indeed us, I got sandwiches and Capri-Sun's

And my friends ate the free lunch

It's crazy trying to look back, cause when I was growing up

I didn't understand the fact was

There's something called a social status

And my black friends weren't in my financial bracket

And then my city's divided

From neighborhood to neighborhood

We're polarized but we claim that we're progressive

The police shoot in the hood but never once in my residence

Has a white person been shot or even stopped in a Lexus?

And to think that we claim that so much has changed

Since Brown versus the Board of Education and Roe versus Wade

But around my way it all stays the same

They just figured out a way to separate the black and white face

[Hook]

From the places with plenty

To the space with no pity

The forces changing our city

One day at a time

If I don't change what's been given

What can I say to my children

Who gonna be claiming this city

One day...

From the places with plenty

To the space with no pity

The forces changing our city

One day at a time

If I don't change what's been given

What can I say to my children

Who gonna be claiming this city

One day...

[Verse 3: Gabriel Teodros of Abyssinian Creole]

Say it's the richest city in the world, right?

Images of Tent City in the shadows of Amazon's office site

In the jungle down the slide in Jose Rizal's park

There's this part in the gate, with a trail to a place over I-5

Where families survive, most my early life we've known about it

Called development? They kicked them folks out

And moved them around every chance they can since

So scared of homelessness, but ignoring them ain't gonna change it

And tearing down the 'jects ain't gonna make your ass safer

For all that paper wasted just to build up Safeco

While Garfield High School still remains like a slave boat

We gave up on hope, a long time ago, so

I wake on this floor, after pacing hours before

Mind racing like a child torn in war zones

With every side challenged

Needing to manage and understand this balance

I can't fall or falter

Brother, I'm just an author

And no amount of words offered has ever been enough to alter this system

Swallowing souls broke

My own folks roam upcoast

Holding dreams close of what America was supposed to be

But works for the rich only

This Southend in reality

Took my family back to what they was running from before

When they left that war

Same shit, different continent

Home don't exist anymore

Home don't exist anymore

The 206 that raised me just ain't the same, yo

[Sample]

All those moments

All those moments

All those moments will be lost, in time

Like tears in rain