Gangland

(album: Church Clothes 3 - 2016)

We not playing out here, it's for real. We living out here for life, we tryna to get it.
Ain't nobody finna take our life. I keep my young homies out here with these things, my big homies keep handling me.
And we keep it cracking. My other name should've been Jesse James cause I stay with my cannon.
I didn't have no choice, I was raised right around the corner from where we standing.
Hollow points in it and all of that, I'm ready. We gang bangin'!

[Lecrae:]
My cousin.. was a killer
He done pulled a lot of triggers
He done made a lot of mamas cry
And if you ask him why he do it he'd just say, "I'm young and foolish"
Bang on you right before he made them bullets fly

He ain't have no sense of dignity, his daddy was a mystery
He'll probably end up dead or sitting in a penitentary
And tell the judge he can go to hell for the sentence
And it probably make no sense if you would listen to the history
The new Jim Crow or the old one
People out here fighting for equality and honestly I think they owe 'em something
Back and forth some
Cleaver got a message for the people
Bunchy with 'em and they tryna stop the evil
And they cliqued up with they fist up
The whole neighborhood feeling like they meant something
Then it was a mix-up, fed's got 'em fixed up
End of the movement, back to the bricks, bruh
And Raymond Washington about to start the Crips up
They getting bigger every day and tryna fix stuff
They saw Geronimo Pratt dodging bullets from attacks
Guess they figure, "We don't really want it this much"

You know originally, the gangs were created to protect everybody in the community.
There was lynching and bombing going on and the gangs were there to protect.
What people don't understand is that a lot of the leaders died.
Medgar Evers (has been shot), Bunchy Carter (has been shot), Fred Hampton (has been shot), MLK (has been shot in Memphis Tennessee).
These youngsters didn't have any direction. No leaders to look up to so they went rogue on 'em

They say that Crip stands for Community
Revolutionary Interparty Service
Way before the genocide and the murders
A little after integration was the verdict
When bombs might go off at the Sunday service (baow!)
They protecting they community
Then it turn into diplomatic immunity
Then a fight against oppression was the pressing
Now they keep on losing battles and they started losing unity
Now they beat each other blue-black
Force fed self hate 'till the truth crack
Got they own folks hiding on the rooftops
They ain't finna take no more, they finna shoot back (baow!)
Now they bond like a family they all bloods
From the concrete jungle to the small hoods
Throwing signs up, now the crime's up
We was meant to kill oppression now we loading 9's up
But never mind us, grind us
Factory done closed, now a lot of people jobless
Now they got the drugs coming in from Nicaragua
Government done turned a blind eye, or they liars

It was a perfect storm. I mean, we're talking post-segregation. And what are you gonna do?
The factories have closed and no one's hiring anybody from the urban community because of what you look like.
And now there's a war going on in Nicaragua and drugs are being imported into your community.
Are you gonna to sell drugs or are you gonna be homeless? Cause the government's not paying attention

[Propaganda:]
Huh, man you tell me
What's a reasonable man to say?
There's a high school in Alabama named after Robert E. Lee And it's 89% black, you don't see the irony?
What it do to a psyche, it's simple, you don't like me
What I'm 'posed to do now?
Delusional calling that system criminal justice
Where the rich and the guilty are safer than the poor and the innocent
Why would we listen?
When American churches scuff they Toms on our brother's dead bodies
As they march to stop gay marriage
We had issues with Planned Parenthood too
We just cared about black lives outside the womb just as much as in
Young man gon' find purpose somehow
And a nation was at least around
And when them vice lords told him he was of royal decent
And that war on drugs felt much more like war on the poor
He figured forget it
So why don't you come stay a while?
Tell us that the son of man walked on Egyptian
And Eastern soil and wasn't just a Western construct
Or master used to control us
But what the Master used to free us
And it was a crooked system just like this that left the King of Kings bloodless
Yeah, we are truly a descendant of a King
Only his reign is infinite
And being right is a distant second to the joy of compassion
Why don't you come stay a while?