Gangland

[Intro] We not playin' out here, it's for real. We livin' 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 handlin' me. And we keep it crackin'. 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 standin'. Hollow points in it and all of that, I'm ready. We gang bangin'! [Intro: Lecrae] My cousin *beep* 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 [Verse 1: Lecrae] He ain't have no sense of dignity, his daddy was a mystery He'll probably end up dead or sittin' 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 fightin' for equality and honestly I think they owe 'em somethin' 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 feelin' like they meant somethin' 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 gettin' bigger every day and tryna fix stuff They saw Geronimo Pratt dodgin' bullets from attacks Guess they figure, "We don't really want it this much" [Break 1: Lecrae] 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 [Verse 2: Lecrae] 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 protectin' they community Then it turn into diplomatic immunity Then a fight against oppression was the pressin' Now they keep on losin' battles and they started losin' unity Now they beat each other blue-black Force fed self hate 'till the truth crack Got they own folks hidin' 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 Throwin' signs up, now the crime's up We was meant to kill oppression now we loadin' 9's up But never mind us, grind us Factory done closed, now a lot of people jobless Now they got the drugs comin' in from Nicaragua Government done turned a blind eye, or they liars [Break 2: Lecrae] It was a perfect storm. I mean, we're talkin' 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 [Verse 3: 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?