Made in America

The Last Poets - updated by Ethan]

I love niggas, because niggas are me. And I should only love that which is me. I love that you niggas go through changes, love that you niggas act, love that you niggas make some plays and shoot the shit. But there's one thing about niggas that I don't love. Niggas are scared of revolution.

[T-K.A.S.H.]

There's a war going on at home
It's like Baghdad
In American cities where all the blacks at
Little kids that pack straps and backpacks
Who clap cats for scratch snacks and gas masks
Hard times
Niggas are on the grind
All of the time
Faith in Allah small as a dime
A cup of noodles for breakfast
A cup of noodles for lunch and
A cup of noodles for dinner
Every day is the Winter
Every day is December
Cause evin in the middle of Summer
The streets shudder from the poverty blizzard
Rocket propelled grenades
Landmines and letterbombs
Open up your envelops
With thoughts of them shuttin off
Your water and your lights
And your foods and your rights
All you got in your life
Is little dude and your wife
So you move in the white
With the crew in the night
But you're nervous:
The block drafted you into the service
The curse

You ain't a made nigga, you just afraid nigga
You ain't a made nigga, you just afraid nigga
You ain't a made nigga, you just afraid nigga
You ain't a made nigga, you just afraid nigga

Wakin' up is the beginning of a day that's fucked
Spoons and forks and napkins and plates and cups
Everything but a meal
I bang with my steel
And feel hunger pains in me still
I hit the front line with my ammo and my canteen
Basketball and tennis shoes as a sand screen
Shootin' jumpers as the boys in blue pass me
Casually
I pass cream to the crack fiends
The other day a first Lieutenant was moded
Started up the car and it exploded
But didn't nobody notice
I'm knowin' how it goes
When if the the nigga with the purple heart of courage ain't the oldest
It's cold shit
But if I let little man push
Little man could go and create a plan to ambush
Double jeopardy
Brothers reppin' me
And tellin' me they lovin' and respectin' me
Could be the death of me

You ain't a made nigga, you just afraid nigga
God in heaven could you tell me why you never chose me
You ain't a made nigga, you just afraid nigga
Times I asked you to provide or we wasn't goin' to eat
You ain't a made nigga, you just afraid nigga
Why was everything that you was supposed to do on me
You ain't a made nigga, you just afraid nigga
Since I'm not in heaven it's only one other place I can be

Now shit's hard, when you're up in rank this far
I hit bars and I mix and mingle with stars
You flip cars with overtime you get scarred
And with your broad you begin to whisper “discharge”
Traumatized by the lies of the turncoats
Who walk enemy ground to go and burn smoke
Five dead single shot glock nine to the head
And you like, “Fuck em'”
Them niggas have to learn though
But things deepen
Your enemy's peepin'
The rate you're gain' weight got your thinergies creepin'
They see you're not sleepin'
So they got reason
To send a soldier in your circle
And manipulate the treason
A psychological Hurricane Katrina
And ain't nobody comin' to help
Fuck FEMA
I slowly turn the gun to myself and squeeze it
And Mohhamed Era Su Allayet (?)
I couldn't see it
The grievous

I didn't create this shit, I was born into it. Like I didn't create the projects, I didn't create homelessness, I didn't create poverty, I didn't create unemployment, I didn't create this poor educational system, I was pushed into it, and now you want to blame me for not rising above it? Shit, I may not be that strong!

You ain't a made nigga, you just afraid nigga
You ain't a made nigga, you just afraid nigga
You ain't a made nigga, you just afraid nigga
You ain't a made nigga, you just afraid nigga