Behind My Painted Smile

[Verse 1: Akala] Behind my painted smile when all the revolutionary noise is nothing but a lost little boy Confused and insecure, arrogant and oversure An egotistical prick so come on please praise me more It's great that my music bettered you but I contemplate murder every day so don't put me on a pedestal Plus truly, just the vehicle the music just runs through me In my better moments I could let the universe use me [Lowkey] Behind my smile there's generations of pain, self-hatred, ingrained miseducated my brain Decimated the place where my dead relations were slain Not just physically but mentally penetrated our veins What you got inside hasn't gotta die once it can die a lot of times, that I promise my son Analyse every song that I've done - tryna fight colonialism with a colonised tongue [Hook] Here I stand again Living in sin Caught up, in the dream Behind the painted smile [Akala Verse:2] Behind my painted smile is the most painful grimace This mental prison I live in cause I am so conditioned By my privilege, what a strange contradiction To grow up brown in Britain and know that your living Was paid for by a carcass that resembles yours Born in the heart of the empire You're worth more than I was just like you But less then the native ones, raised by my mum but in this world I am a father's son [Lowkey] Behind my painted smile, a very flawed human being Done many things that I regret and never knew the reason What do you believe in, truth or freedom or are you deceiving? I don't wanna die in prostration to European's They say the answer is within you and nowhere else Understand the vision man on a mission to know himself This is for my co-defendants no retreat and no surrender You probably think that we don't remember Ota Benga [Hook] [Akala verse:3] The smile is painted on my face is tainted by a frown Picture in the pocket's of blood that decorate the town Trigger jum bullets sung and guns hum Then everyone that's dead was somebody's someone [Lowkey] Behind my painted smile I feel like a naked child Maybe rapping ain't for now cos my passion is fading out Up early though I search and roam along this dirty road Just another traveller taking a long journey home [Akala] All this talk of intervention to protect on what is the intention Same as it ever was the colonial past and present And more respect for most of the right wingers Than the paternalistic patronising liberal bigot [Lowkey] Our way of life is so divine, we should intervene Select war and export the British dream Behind cinema screens there's much that isn't seen George Clooney war movies never bring our children peace [Akala] Yo fam, you ever wake up and just feel like fucking off,and never coming back to this place and just cutting off? [Lowkey] All the time, almost did last year the trouble was the bloody cops had me running in and out the bloody dock [Akala] I been there brother, though I don't promote it in this rap shit, I ain't a stranger to having my back on their blue plastic [Lowkey] Can't keep us captive [Akala] We see the tactics [Lowkey] To keep us passive [Akala] We beat the fascists [Lowkey] Release the classics [Akala & Lowkey] And reach the masses! [Hook]x2