I Stand Alone

[Intro: Common] Sometimes we feel alone But alone ain’t always wrong [Verse 1: Common] Alone in a crowded room My mind made up like a powder room I’m the sun, giving the clouds some room I shine, shine like the hour noon Tune is to stay in step with every day men And women, the rythym of the realness Still I’m Legend like Will Smith In the presence of the fake I am a real gift Open it, hopin' it'd be something dope in it Movement of the people getting motion sick We ride on the highs and lows of it On the Southside, we got hosed for it Standing up like Rich Pryor We get fire and inspire 'bout a prospect to get higher Your sire on the throne grew up around the stones The ranger, so I stand alone [Hook: Patrick Stump] I’m flying high up in the sky I will not run, I will not hide I stand alone, I stand alone I stand alone, I stand alone The only test is to survive I will succeed I will not die I stand alone, I stand alone I stand alone, I stand alone [Verse 2: Common] Success it is, we blessed to live Not just my kids, want the best for his Progression lives where the lessons is I got my own, God bless the kid In the mid part of Babylon listening to Farrakhan In the parks of Avalon Streets we would battle on Got the good book in my carry-on Life is a race, I’m the marathon Man on the moon, give the boy some room Rose from the concrete, told you I would bloom Situation brought out the hero A little black 13-year-old The voice of the Lord in my earlobe Telling me my purpose, I could see it clearer Revolution in the execution of lyrics Spirit of Gil Scott, Marvin Gaye, modern day I pray [Hook] x2 [Interlude: Michael Eric Dyson] The irresistible appeal of Black individuality - where has all of that gone? The very people who blazed our path to self-expression and pioneered a resolutely distinct and individual voice have too often succumbed to mind-numbing sameness and been seduced by simply repeating what we hear, what somebody else said or thought and not digging deep to learn what we think or what we feel, or what we believe Now it is true that the genius of African culture is surely its repetition, but the key to such repetition was that new elements were added each go-round. Every round goes higher and higher. Something fresh popped off the page or jumped from a rhythm that had been recycled through the imagination of a writer or a musician. Each new installation bore the imprint of our unquenchable thirst to say something of our own, in our own way, in our own voice as best we could. The trends of the times be damned Thank God we've still got musicians and thinkers whose obsession with excellence and whose hunger for greatness remind us that we should all be unsatisfied with mimicking the popular, rather than mining the fertile veins of creativity that God placed deep inside each of us