Uncle Usi Taught Me

(album: All The Beauty In This Whole Life - 2017)

Mm-hmm
Uncle Usi taught me
Can't teach what you don't know
Can't lead where you don't go
Can't reap what you don't sow
Can't fool the people no more

You know me I'm a globe traveler, soul ambassador
Reporting live from the world wide massacre
No mask for the truth that animates me
See it and I speak it wherever it takes me
I'm in the Republic of Iran at a conference
Talking 'bout the cops and their nonsense
And how they like to hunt black folk with no conscience
And how they want to preach human rights, its preposterous
Request from the audience spit that Uncle Sam Goddamn
Drawing out the round of applauses
I was rocking a capella before this
Because I know that rapping in Iran is lawless
Ahh sh you know me though anything for the people
The clapping kind of tapped in to my fat rapper ego
I fell into the trap plugged in my Mac and let the beat go
Didn't think that nobody would hear though, here we go

Can't teach what you don't know
Can't lead where you don't go
Can't reap what you don't sow
Can't fool the people no more
Oh, here he go
Can't teach what you don't know
Can't lead where you don't go
Can't reap what you don't sow
Can't fool the people no more
This is how it go

Friday we greet each other at the mosque
But here there's only one and the government preacher talks
Which struck me as odd but nothing could prepare me for
A big ass mob chanting "Death to America"
It felt like somebody talking 'bout my mama, wait
It's all real but I'ma still feel some type of way
You mean the system and I'm with you on that
But you got to be more specific than that
You ain't talking 'bout the families getting whipped in the back
I'm tripping cause I've never felt defensive like that
Okay so meanwhile footage of me spitting these raps
Is playing on every TV station they have
They jail people for that
The local rappers all start clapping back
Death threats all in my social media apps, hm
I started looking at the people that brought me here
Like, "what the hell y'all got me on man I'm out of here"

Can't teach what you don't know
Can't lead where you don't go
Can't reap what you don't sow
Can't fool the people no more
Oh, here y'all go
Can't teach what you don't know
Can't lead where you don't go
Can't reap what you don't sow
Can't fool the people no more
This is how it go

This that international gang banging and
My homeland hit Iran with the sanctions
And my credit cards and telephone ain't happening
But I can't imagine a better land to be stranded in
Almost everyone that see me coming
Want to take me home and they trying to feed me something
But I took the last forty dollars that I had
And headed to the airport in a cab and there I sat
Starving cause there's only one flight a day
I can't even buy a ticket tryna find a way
Somebody seen me on TV and recognized my face
And let me write an email to my wife in the states
I'm in the airport three days, wondering if I'm even safe
Finally got a seat on the plane
Now imagine my exhausted embarrassment
Get back to America they interrogate me like a terrorist
Really?

Can't teach what you don't know
Can't lead where you don't go
Can't reap what you don't sow
Can't fool the people no more
Watch where you go
Can't teach what you don't know
Can't lead where you don't go
Can't reap what you don't sow
Can't fool the people no more

[?]