Claiming The City

(album: The Language Of My World - 2005)

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

[Ka.lil:]
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

[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

[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

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

[Gabriel Teodros:]
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

All those moments
All those moments
All those moments will be lost, in time
Like tears in rain