Look
Black is beautiful, black is excellent
Black is pain, black is joy, black is evident
It's workin' twice as hard as the people you know you're better than
'Cause you need to do double what they do so you can level them
Black is so much deeper than just African-American
Our heritage been severed, you never got to experiment
With family trees 'cause they teach you about famine and greed
And show you pictures of our fam on their knees
Tell us we used to be barbaric, we had actual queens
Black is watching child soldiers gettin' killed by other children
Feelin' sick like "Oh shit, this coulda happened to me"
Your mummy watchin', tellin' stories 'bout your dad and your niece
The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
The kid dies, the blacker the killer, the sweeter the news
And if he's white, you'll give him a chance, he's ill and confused
If he's black he's probably armed, you see and you shoot
Look
Black is growin' up around the barbershop
Mummy sayin' stay away from trouble, you're in yard a lot
Studyin' for ages, appreciating the chance you got
'Cause black is in your blood and you ain't even got the heart to stop
Black is steppin' in for your mother because your father's gone
And standin' by your children when you haven't proving karma wrong
Black is doing all of the above and going corner shopping
Tryna help a lady cross the road to have her walking off
Black is growing up around your family and making it
Then being forced to leave the place you love because there's hate in it
People say you fake this shit, never stayed to change this shit
But black is being jealous, you'd be dead if you had stayed in it
Black is struggling to find your history or change this shit
You don't know the truth about your race 'cause they're erasing it
Black has got a sour fucking flavor, here's a taste of it
But black is all I know, there ain't a thing that I would change in it
Look
Black ain't just a single fucking color man, there's shades to it
Her hair straight and thick but mine's got waves in it
Black is not divisive, they've been lying and I hate this shit
Black has never been a competition, we all make this shit
Black is deadly, black is when you're freezing in your home
And you can't get sleep, but never feeling empty 'cause
You got 20 cousins in your country living stress-free
Walking for their water, daughter wrapped inside a bed sheet
Black is distant
It's representing countries that never even existed
While your grandmother was living
Black is my Ghanaian brother reading into scriptures
Doin' research in his lineage, finding out that he's Egyptian
Black is people naming your counties on what they trade most
Coast of Ivory, Gold Coast, and the Grain Coast
But most importantly, to show how deep all of this pain goes
West Africa, Benin, they called it slave coast
Black is so confusing 'cause the culture, they're in love with it
They take our features when they want and have their fun with it
Never seem to help with all the things we know will come with it
Loud in our laughter, silent in our suffering
Black is being strong inside and facing defeat
Poverty made me a beast, I battled the law in the streets
We all struggle, but your struggle ain't a struggle like me
Or how could it be when your people gave us the odds that we beat
I mean fucking hell, what about our brothers that are stuck in jail
That could have bust the bail, they held a bird and gotta live with it
Black is being guilty until proven that you're innocent
Black is sayin' "Free my fuckin' niggas stuck inside in prisons cells"
They think it's funny, we ain't got nothing to say to them
Unconditional love is strange to them, it's amazing them
Black is like the sweetest fucking flavor, here's a taste of it
But black is all I know, there ain't a thing that I would change in it
2019