I don't mean to come at y'all disrespectfully Or demand somehow that you should open up to me I'm expressing some awareness of what my country do to you Take a strong black song and make it blue The conversation seems forever stuck in the second grade “We're all the same” - then what the fuck about your rage? Y'all just supposed to keep it zipped at the lip? Don't rock the boat, handle it cuz it's your shit? “Oh we just can't take it when y'all get upset” But what color dying in the hood and on the rez? Even if our past wasn't what it was Present injustices alone would be enough Oh what to do with what we actually feel? The racial division and skisms they instilled? Something so complex, so entrenched, so ill I wanna stare that shit right in the grill If there's one thing I do know from my own experience It's that wrongdoing needs acknowledgement You can't magic wand that shit away The one who suffered gonna have a lot to say Black man, black man, black man! Let's have it out Don't wanna take the topic on another roundabout I ain't scared of your anger: still, it hurts Can I get over the fact that it ain't personally deserved? Can I remember the central issue here's your pain? Is my love strong enough to maintain In the face of your truth? And so many of my color gotta be convinced that your specific agony is even legit “Everybody's suffered-” well of course that's true And now I'm speaking bout white on black abuse An oppression gnawing at my country's bones No I cannot leave that shit alone Collective memories of black bodies writhing in flames And on our side, we just writhing in shame Whether we know it or not, they got our hearts on lock Clamoring at the cages of race that do not Allow expression of our natural tendency To know one another as family Oh what to do in a nation based on so much denial Years of terror raining down on black woman and child Feeding us a fantasy it's all in the past But the brutality of slavery is heard in gun blasts Oh I know it: those ghosts are with us all the time No matter your side of the color divide A nation build on something SO foul cannot rest The spirits simply must be addressed! Black woman! Let's have it out! Don't wanna take the topic on another roundabout I ain't scared of your anger- still, it hurts Can I get over the fact that it ain't personally deserved? Can I remember the central issue here's your pain? Is my love strong enough to maintain In the face of your truth? My right to speak in these tones is objectionable to some They got a word for it: appropriation So I should keep it lily-white....right? It ain't fair I rock the style when I never had to fight Through the same struggles Oh the Man just hands me respect Never had an ancestor noose around his neck (Well that ain't exactly true the Inquisition further back) But hell no I don't know how it feels to be black It's understandably opening of deep-ass scars To see these white kids like me spittin' bars Shakin' ass Plus I got the white girl pass? Access to all the privileges of white middle class To the riches of a nation built on y'all's broken heart But it's the nature of this fertile goddess we call art To cross-pollinate, it's the movement of air But the least I can do is actually care Black people! Let's have it out! Don't wanna take the topic on another roundabout I ain't scared of your anger- still, it hurts Can I get over the fact that it ain't personally deserved? Can I remember the central issue here's your pain? Is my love strong enough to maintain In the face of your truth? In the face of your truth Yo for real, for real In a spirit of humility and respect I want to say thank you to the black people of my country For enduring what y'all have endured To your ancestors for surviving and passing on life and allowing y'all to be here as a part of this nation that has shown y'all SO little love Thank you for your culture, for your love That has been a blessing to my life in more ways than I could ever say Than I could ever say From “Let's Have It Out” by Asliani COPYRIGHT ASLIANI 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Babylon system, so they say 2014 and damn right we're living in a cage Dominator culture raping the Earth Rip us all from the mother: make us all hurt The prison of Christian thought is not all there is But the walls of the conditioning are thick Yes we spent millenia sucking kingly dick Swallowing a version of reality so sick But see I got the keys to everything we need Kali coming back to kick some ass now we Getting back our feminine oh yes we healing I can show you know what I know but only if you're willing! See, what they wrested so brutally from us Burned me the stake cuz I wouldn't give it up Never really died, it never really went away It's all around us, the garden of forever it awaits Chorus: I'ma take you by the hand, show you what I know Take you by the hand, show you what I know Take you by the hand, show you what I know Uh-huh (repeat) Long before they cut out my eyes Fifty-thousand years before this paradigm I have know freedom in time A whisper in my ear say a mystic spirit never dies I have known sacred groves This history of all life revealed to me in a stone In vision states I have flown You were there with me always Your eyes shone It's a relationship to the present That's in the body, in the breath In the rediscovery of courageous innocence In the willingness to be naked souls again I can show you what I know if you give to me a turn We gotta go beyond the walls of everything we learned Yeah it's scary- I can be your big sis I'm tellin' you my people yes we GOT this! Chorus COPYRIGHT ASLIANI 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED