[Verse 1: Finale]

Condos remodel my old turf

For what it's worth, soul got left in the earth

On a search I stood in front of Compuware

The Hudson Building spoke first and said I was here

From old bricks all over downtown

To Sears with the Roebuck attachment

Purple Gang used to move through your block

Like a Mafia pageant

Move around in my town

Where spittas talk

And if you leave, forget us

And try to come back?

I hope you turn into a pillar of salt

Every jackhammer cracking the concrete

That's a lost and forgotten piece of the D

We’ll never see in a book or paper

Replaced with a temp casino

Strip mall, liquor store

Another stadium doubling as a palladium, eateries

The D speaks to me

Now watch yesterday get swept away beneath a pile of debris

Committees picking from a lottery

For the hottest riverfront property

Sign over your deed

Shocking to see us go from Peoplemover to people movers

Let the people choose a better way

They set up shop and sped away

Landmarks come and go like a john with a pro

Led astray and they run up on Detroit for consumption

So I look back and see my city

Under construction

Look back and see my city

Under construction

[Hook]

By the locusts

Surrounding suffocating the city and trying to choke us

Ravaging the crops making the situation hopeless

But we staying focused

Never let the locusts approach us

[Verse 2: Invincible]

Locusts and buzzards circle and hover above the

Abandoned houses shattered windows with the crooked shutters

Cross the street construct a cookie cutter condominium

Lining Woodward, it's the prime meridian

You divide the city and

In the hood, wonder why you pay two times the premiums?

They been redlining the dark-skinned

Owners of homes where they loan with a sharks fin

Arson the property probably for the insurance policy

It's a prophecy that's self fulfilling

They claim to cure us of poverty, BUT

It's serving removal

Of residents with urban renewal

The reverend is the realtor

Here to save and heal ya!

They even “buy ugly houses”

And its memorabilia

Of a myth of a city that's a mystery

Auto industry’s widow

On the auction floor they start to bid low

On houses with hanging gutters and peeling shingles

Purchased at a nervous pace and a cadence

I heard a wrecking ball hit a building that's mistaken for vacant

A sleeping city awakened

By bulldozers and the wool pulled over our eyes

It comes as no surprise

Why the rents are more from the French to Ford

To the Ilitches

Trying to pillage the village and milk it for all that it's worth

While they killing us

But we still got resilience

[Hook]

[Verse 3: Invincible]

Selective memory, convenient amnesia

Enemies scheming on land seizures

Pretend to be well meaning but stampede us

I know you not supposed to bite the hand that feeds ya

But it's poisonous, spread injustice like fungus candida

Predatory planning

Eminent domain

Mowed down Motown

For parking lot next to the game

Empty sentiment of development for pennies to gain

Forget memory lane

This is history

It's like erasing Proof–only remembering Eminem’s name

Many stories

Only one written in pen will remain

With jobs – we at least in a drought

Met a construction worker hates demolishing buildings

But gotta feed his seeds and his spouse

Told me the city pushes people into leaving they house

They cut the lights and gas it freezes em out

Who decided the divide between suburb and ghetto corner?

Henry Ford swinging his chain, the Nazi medal of honor

[Verse 4: Finale]

I'm looking at this strip

Where Lottie the body she probably shook them hips

The malnourished and wild flourish

Among style murderers

Who wanna pile dirt on us

The word on the street is that we won't last long

And is it me?

But if the history of my city was passed on

Could we physically, in spirit and mind, find a way to move

And grab at this song?

And I was young but snuck in

Mahogany put stars in orbit

Unsupported foundation, we aborted sound

Allowed rape and now

It's a bar where men and women got to frequent

And spit a slick thing in each of your ear

And sip a mixed drink and beer for sport

And now the block can not hear

And how we got here

We’ll never know

They showed a broken up Hip Hop Shop board on VH1

Like, "ay come here come see where they from"

And that shit was too hard for me to chew

Like I hate gum

And y'all can play dumb like Jim, man

All I want is another Lush Lounge for us

A new united sounds around to bus

So people can see us

Before the debris and dust and what was

And I am not trying to rap, man

I'm time travelin'