Kendrick Lamar - Vanity Slaves Part 1 lyrics

[Verse 1] Sometimes I want to leave, sometimes I want to cry Sometimes I hate to bear the truth, sometimes I want to lie Sometimes I want to school the youth, sometimes I want to ride Sometimes I want to not think, sometimes I want to vibe Sometimes I want to bump Tribe and zone out This song's 'bout a young boy that's gone wild inside When my world collide With your world where your girl and your kids reside We k**ed the facades, we feel free to fly We're birds that reserve in the charismatic sky I care about my pride too much If my clothes is new, if my ride is plush If my hair is cut, if my diamonds is crushed I look in the mirror, I'm trendy enough? Wrong Insecurity roams the black community Homes where kids must have j**elry The high school female need earrings and details So she can be cool to be, amongst popularity The various name brands that reached the price scan It's not about the right price but more like the right scam To rule us all, confuse us all Hit the bank within five minutes and then withdraw Now let's draw The picture of a rapper with a chain and Range that is not paid for My cousin from the South said he just bought him a house That lives around his neck like a white collar So why fast forward? then I'll rewind, a time machine can help me double back to slavery times Picking cotton from a field that a white man own The blacker you are, farther you're from the white man's home Negro spiritual songs, gave us some type of sanity Before your vanity, they parted our families They put us in hundred degree shade and outside we bathed The more we were afraid, the more they made rules And trapped our minds in a cage, our freedom was so vague Couldn't see it with the eyes of Tracee Ross (uh) And school was exempt, see we couldn't have smarts And a smirk could get you hurt, wounded first from a scar 400 years of nothing, 400 years of suffering 400 years of tears, and tribulations, miseducation See what we facing is now coming back to the roots Remember whips on our back and if we would run they would shoot Called us n******gs and figured that we never live in pursuit Of happiness, we capture these feelings in things that we do Thought of abstinence of slavery but we made it come to About a perspective, my shoe selection gotta be Louie Her hand bag gotta be Gucci, it's fake then she fool me She still bad though, and her fake Gucci ain't that bad though We filling up the gas for Rollies Upgrade to 26's after riding Kobes My cousin from the South, slavery start in the South and I bet ya He overcompensates for the life of his ancestors So blame it on the 400 years we never saw The reason why the next 400 we gotta floss Slaves [Outro] I said the 400 years we never had nothing Barely had clothes on our back Is the reason why when we get a little bit of change We over exaggerate on our living expenses So if you get your first big check and you cop a chain before you buy a house You're a vanity slave If you're a female and you got 4,5,6 rings on your finger Four holes in your left ear and a nose piercing You're a vanity slave If you got an 02' Monte Carlo with 24's on it And on the back of the window it says *get on my level ho* You're a vanity slave We're all vanity slaves, and with that being said Can somebody please tell me where the mall at? I'm not from around here, hey Ali, where we at? Idaho? Yeah n***a, you know the first of the month, checks coming in I'm tryna get some What up?