In Harlem, these days,
it's pick your poison, I guess
every time I leave town
and I come back
I watch these streets grieve
it's k** the chosen, I guess
You delete the face of Lenox Avenue
Hang gentrification like ornament
Casket-fill St. Nicholas projects
Drown the history of Morningside Heights
Come in, take out
You chokehold the Cotton Clubs throat
Silence the drums of the barrio
No one is safe
Uptown is being broke down
Black businesses fold now
This how amnesia starts
you stop them people from learning who they are
plantation those ghettos
Cut down the trees on Convict
Put that Starbucks on that corner
Auction block all ethnicity
Decapitate ancestry
Why look at all the black kids dancing moving
let's shackle their ankles so they can't get light
knock the buildings down, make them white
its bloodsplattered pavement
no justice, just crime scenes here
Christopher Columbus the culture
Amistad the Strivers Row
Slaveship that Harlem Shake
better yet, steal it, mock it, mimic it
make it primetime YouTube buffoonery
Why look at all the black kids, black kids
bound to be bar kids, drowning
you know they can't swim, drowning
to bounce up, shine down, lace up,
lock up, the rights up, close down
park floor, crack pipe, dark girl
sing, sing, singing, singing, singing
singing the hymns of Adam Clayton Powell
praise filling 135th street like an ocean
but there's no God anymore
just tourists
sitting in the back of Corinthians 1st Baptist Church
like it's a zoo
like we's a beast spectacle
like we's be's caged hyenas
laughing at us
like children do
like demons do
like we don't be people
People? My people
hanging on for dear life
scaling the limbs like monkey bars
whispering from the concrete jungle
RIP RIP RIP
Rest In Peace Apollo!
Rest In Peace Polo Grounds!
Rest in Peace Rucker Park!
No more playing No days off
No Billie Holiday's here
No songs singing in tune with the sun
They're just fathers and mothers
and sisters and brothers
and brothers and sisters and lovers
covering their children
from screams and whiplashes
and blunts and guns and guns
Bullets do know what color your skin is:
that color black, that color negro
that Colored Negro is being watered down
is being afterthought
is being etch-a-sketched
is being murdered
is being thrown out
Come in, take out
No one is safe