Three Rivers

(album: We're All Alone In This Together - 2021)

Look

Imagine an island where the party never ends
Where it's less about money and it's more about friends
Where the vibes can't done
It's less about funding and and more about fun
Tropical sun, this life in the '60s coming from the Caribbean
You know Ian, Delroy, Vivian, Winston
Who got drafted to England
Windrush babies from Kingston to Brixton
To say they're the life of the party, you're wrong
My Jamaicans the entire party, you can't see?
Big Notting Hill carni, you can't see?
And the ride's fiber glass, G, you wan' see?
Imagine a place where you raise your kids
The only place you live says you ain't a Brit
They're deporting our people and it makes me sick
'Cause they was broken by the country that they came to fix
It's like

They came on the invitation of the British Government
The passports were stacked indefinitely to remain
But for some who were children then, that was a false promise
"Thirty-seven years of paying taxes and I got a letter saying I was an illegal immigrant
I came here to England at the age of ten and I've lived here all my life"

Look, imagine a world that's flawed and full of evil
Where dictators and leaders are persecuting your people
The bodies of the innocence are piling to the steeples
The ironic part is they're preying on the feeble
That's life in the 90's, you're Eastern European
And you seeing people dying 'cause they're fighting for their freedom
And show you violence for having a voice
You move out with your kids in hope of having a choice
Life throws you a spanner, you can't handle the pain
So you gamble and you drink and then you gamble again
You argue with your wife and then you sleep on the couch
You hit your children, then start freezing 'em out
You try and work things out, but it's never the same
All the women in your household are living afraid
When you look into the mirror you're reminded again
That you've become the dictator you were fighting against
It's like

We're fighting for our rights, for all our mothers...
And then we, we... we are fighting for our homes...
We are fighting for our own...

Look, imagine a world that's fucked and untrue
Where the many pay a price for the few
And every day the sun rises a little later
That's how it is when your oppressor is your liberator
'Cause right now living in the Middle East
Praise Allah for the peace
Death from a sky littered with stars
You run away with your kids so you can give them a chance
But your asylum has got you in a different war
Because the British wanna know what you're living here for
We rely on migration more than ever before
They're key workers, but they couldn't even get in the door
When you're at Heaven's Gates, what you telling the Lord?
You wouldn't even let a kid into some steadier shores
That's a life they may never afford
Surely you would wanna give your people chances that were better than yours?
No?

Ten years of conflict, and twelve-thousand children have been killed or injured
The children here are just a tiny fraction of the estimated six-million in need of emergency medical asisstance
As many of three-million no longer in their own homes
With up to two-million children attend school
The opportunities of this generation have been changed forever by this conflict

I went to silence when I need to who the, who the fuck I was, bro
Like, I won't hear anyone else, shut everyone else out
So I could just hear myself, bro
You know what I'm sayin'?
Cause we live in this world, yeah
You stand still, the way the tides set up
It will take you away from yourself, you feel me?
So then I was like "Aight, cool"
But, I had to get silent, but it's not like mans going against the tide
'Cause going against the tide still makes it about them
Still makes it about the poison that you've eternalized in your mind, you feel me?
It's like "Bro, why am I in this water?
Man, this water don't even like me, it's not even for me
It's not taking me where I wanna go, it's not taking me where I wanna go
It's who the fuck I am, bro, you know I'm sayin'?
So the tide will tell me that being black is an obstacle
See what I'm sayin'?
I had to, switch Rivers, bro
It's like being black is an asset
I am who I am because I'm black
And I love everything about it, you feel me?
And that's who the fuck I am