Black Thought - Welcome To America lyrics

Welcome to America Where you can dream, as long as you can breathe You can be the muh'fu*kin' President of United States And get murdered right on these streets Welcome to America [Black Thought] The sins of the father my pop gave me to suffer The friends I would follow was crack babies and hustlers It's steel sharpen steel in the block, made me a cutler My pen is from the future like Octavia Butler (Welcome to America, oh) My grandmother sutured a flag from bloody cotton The fruits of her labor alas already rotten (Welcome to America, yeah, ayy) 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? They make you wanna let off a gun, until the emptiness like Preach now lover, preach now lover Got me runnin', runnin', runnin', runnin', runnin' Welcome to America [Black Thought] Yo, I'm ill-fated and hated, I'm hella melanated 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 After keeping it a hundred even though the truth is heavy Who stand firmly and see their 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 serving it now Tell my family I'll be making my return in a while And every symbol of oppression, I'll be burning it down Welcome to America (Yeah) Where you can dream, as long as you can breathe (Long as you breathe) You can be the muh'fu*kin' President of United States (That's right) And get murdered right on these streets (Doo, doo) Welcome to America Land of the brave (Yeah) and home of the free (That's bullsh*t, man) You can be a saint or a sinner or a billionaire (Yeah) 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 (The world ain't over) What they say is what we'll do (It's what we gon' do now) We outpowered, still have power (Still got 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, hang now, hey now, hang now [Black Thought] Now, a Black soul never passes alone If it's blood spilled on the ancestor's ashes and bone From a pure heart, the Lord fashioned after His own Went 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 cloth Has never been soft, while history was running its course I ran hard from Jamestown with slaves, found Jesus And found demons that never be charged with malfeasance I sat through they revival, though I never found credence I found that we had never know sh*t about freedom I've been charged with treason and I've been scarred and freezing And I've been called a ni**a and then called a heathen When hounds found me, they couldn't even tell if I was breathing In America where on black men, it's open season