Black Thought - Welcome To America Lyrics

Welcome to America
Where you can dream, as long as you can breathe
You can be the muthafuckin' President of United States
Or get murdered right on these streets
Welcome to America

The sins of the father, my pop gave me to suffer
The friends I would follow was crack babies and hustlas
It's steel sharpen steel on the block, made me a cutler
My pen is from the future like Octavia Butler (welcome to America)
My grandmother sutured a flag from bloody cotton
The fruits of her labor alas already rotten (welcome to America, yeah)
My man said, "Yo, it's crazy how fast that we've forgotten"
That we used to pull boxes and plows like we were oxen and cows
Without an option, and now it's this glorious
Victorious, story only pitched, for me to shut it down
They sold some of us down the rivers
It's such a poor level of thought, I get the shivers
It's insidious and it's always been hideous
I had to tread water and run, be amphibious
They do you so dirty for one, yo what's cleanliness?
It make you wanna let off a gun, until the emptiness like

Preach now lover, preach now lover
Got me runnin', runnin', runnin', runnin'
Welcome to America

Yo, I'm ill-fated and hated, I'm hella melinated
Blackness is my religion, to that I'm dedicated (welcome to America)
I follow the laws of nature, by which I'm regulated
The universe, my university, I'm educated
This one is for my very revolutionaries
Out here keepin' it a hundred, even though the truth is heavy
Who stand firmly and see that life is a journey
That either God or the gurney, my public defender burned me
So did the district attorney, in a turbulent trial
They told me that time is master, well I'm servin' it now
Tell my family I'll be makin' my return in a while
And every symbol of oppression I'll be burnin' it down

Welcome to America
Where you can dream, as long as you can breathe
You can be the muthafuckin' President of United States
Or get murdered right on these streets
Welcome to America
Land of the brave, and home of the free
You can be a saint or a sinner, or a billionaire
Or just stand on your feet
Welcome to America
(Keep on runnin', runnin')
America, oh Lord
(Keep on runnin', runnin')
Welcome to America
(Keep on runnin', runnin')
America, oh yeah

'Cause when it's over, the world ain't over
What they say is what we'll do
We have power, still have power
And that's what we cannot lose

Runnin' in the shadows, got my eye on the sparrow
Tomorrow may not come, at least my soul felt this love
If I let you go, at least my soul felt this love
Hey now, hey now, hey now, hey now

Now, a black soul never passes alone
If its blood spilled on the ancestors ashes and bone
From a pure heart, the Lord fashioned after his own
We're packaged and flown to the essence of his African throne
For every lost body, crossed, tarred, feathered, and tossed
It's no way I could measure the course, or ever exhaust
But whether it's yours or mine, this American clause
Has never been solved, while history was runnin' its course
I ran hard from Jamestown, where slaves Jesus and found
Demons that never be charged with malfeasance, I sat
Through they revival, although I never found credence, I found
That we had never know shit about freedom
I been charged with treason, I been scarred and freezin'
I been called a nigga, and then called a heathen
When hounds found me, they couldn't even tell if I was breathin'
In America where on black man it's open season