[Intro]
Let's try somethin' new
It’s been a long time coming!
Let me try something brand new
Hey yo Ski!
We overdue, man
Come on!
Yo what we do it for?
This is for the day-trippers and the hipsters
Whores and the fashionistas
Spiritual leaders practicing all the laws of attraction
The teachers who read the passages
We bustin off Dalai Lamas and flashin' heaters (?)
With the shooting, the thugging and all the spooning
The crooning, the auto-tuning. Alas
You be tellin', peddlin' to consumers
I'm helping them to see through it
Get with this new movement
Let's move it!
[Hook]
Through the cold rain
I’m still standing right here
Even though it (?)
[Verse 2]
Yeah I’m a product of Reaganomics
From the blocks where they rockin' the feds like Jay Electronica
Drop and make this a lock that the crime is where the heart is
Could drop, and make us (?), that the crime is where the heart is
Where the Jesus or Muhammad regardless of where the mosque is
They hope for the Apocalypse like a self-fulfilling prophet
Tell me where do we stop it?
Do they ask you your religion before you rent an apartment?
Is the answer burning Qurans so that we can defend Islamics?
The answer's upon us with a hash tag, a trendy topic
You take away the freedoms that we brought in the game
Then you disrespect the soldiers; you ask them to die in vein
In a desert praying for rain
My music's like a drug, and they tend to take it in the vein
It ain’t for the well-behaved
The soundtrack for when you're braver, the score when you felt afraid
More than your average rapper so you sort of felt the (?)
The brain is like a cage, you a slave, and that's why they lovin' you
This is the book that Eli that start with a K-W
[Hook] x2
I do it for the trappers, other rappers
The backbackers, the crackers
The niggas, the metal-packers
The victims of ghetto factories
I do it for the families
The citizens of humanity
MCs endangered species like manatees
I do it for the future of my children
They the hope for the hopeless
When karma approaches we gon' be food for a flock of vultures
The end of the world, ain't nothin left but the cockroaches
And the freedom fighters
We freedom writers like Bob Moses
They chose us, freedom writers like (?)
For my block, my boro, my hood, my city, my state yea
My obligation to my community is so clear
Yea, we gotta save them, this opportunity so rare
We do is so big over here that it's not fair
To the punks, the bitches, the chumps, the snitches that sneak in the game
We let them live although they weak and they lame
They posers and jokers, promoting when they speaking my name
it should be “Freedom writers like Voltaire”
and Voltaire was a writer in the Enlightenment era and he wrote about and supported religious freedom
A rejection of soft rappers who play the “thugs” persona.
While this observation would have one time been trenchant, gangster rap has already been pronounced dead by such mainstream outlets as GQ:
The Bhagavad Gita is a Hindu scripture that is part of the ancient Hindu epic, the Mahabharata.
Here he’s talking about Terry Jones, the Florida Pastor who organized a Koran bonfire (which he later cancelled) in protest of the “Ground Zero Mosque” (which was never built). It was really the first time since 9/11/2001 that Americans have rallied around a pro-Islamic cause.
He was a child of the Ronald Reagan era.
Instead of fighting for freedom, Talib expresses his Beautiful Struggle in words. But Bob Moses probably struggled more than Talib and has focused on teaching rather than being a terribly prolific writer.
He continues the analogy by saying freedom writers like Voltaire.
On Twitter, a hashtag (#) is used to link users' “tweets.” Kweli makes a play on words with “trendy topic.” A topic with a lot of hashtags might be considered a “trending topic.”
KW + Eli = Kweli
A play on the popular religious apocalyptic film, Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington
Consumerism is a common theme in Talib’s music. Much like Kayne, All Falls Down, he never fully embraces it. Talib purports to reject his material condition but probably cannot it escape it any more than the rest of us.
The Dalai Lama is a very peaceful and spiritual person.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalai_Lama) Lamas are also a slang term for guns
Talib is saying that killing for peace is ironic
Alluding to weirdo memes like The Secret – the “Laws of Attraction” state that if you say “I need more money” you’ll be poor, but if you say “I shall have more money!” you’ll be rich
Total bullshit, obviously..