In - Lupe Fiasco

I was born in a small village

I was still a child when we were raided by soldiers

Foreign soldiers

Torn from my elders, I was made to speak their language

With each new post, my masters changed

Along with the words they made me speak

With each change, I changed too

My thoughts, personality, how I saw right and wrong

Words can kill

Time and again, the country was ruled by a foreign tongue

When he was a young boy, he lost his native language

The bedrock for any developing child

His country, his family, his face, his identity

Everything was stolen from him

Meet me on the corner, I be waiting on you

Thousand years of better right into forever

Fire on my feathers, fall from out of heaven

Fight without a weapon, life without a lesson

Lost, I’m my own boss, pay my own cost

Fill my own goals, see my own hopes

Tired of all of this, wish I had a switch

One kiss then you cut me off

Knowledge is the power, college is for cowards

Hollering for hours, swallowing the sour

Skin stuck around the rims, peeking in on a life so sweet

The other side made it, why don’t we?

From ancient times, every civilization’s ruler has had the same idea.

When people unite under one will, they become stronger than the sum of their

parts and what do rulers use to bring people together?

Language.

«This world will become one, I have found the way.

Race, tribal affiliations,

national borders — even our faces will be irrelevant.

The world that the boss

envisioned will finally become a reality and it will make mankind whole again

Found a friend in the words and my words and it works

Take away the pain, take away the hurt

Make a way to make a change, make it sane

Specially if you plan on staying on this Earth

Low to the lows, high to the highs

Eyes to the sky, strive to revive, dying to survive

Pool full of cries but it’s cool, I’m still alive

And every breath is every left soul

And the family never kept whole

In the slum, want to quest to be the best of being less

Never let go, the best road to the next level

And the scenes where it’s mean to do the right thing

Not to be a good king but the best devil

So it’s horns for the crown, torn from the ground

Roses by the roots stolen from the roofs on parade days

Look at them rain down

I was brought here a slave

But I leave here a pharaoh

America is a country of liberty, a meeting of immigrants

Instead of simply assimilating, its citizens live alongside others

So the major sought a system that used information

Words to control the subconscious

In his eyes, the greatest symbiotic parasite the world’s ever known isn’t

microbial -- it’s linguistic

Words is what keep civilization, our world, alive

If you are what you say you are, the coolest

Won’t you just shine down?

You are what you say you are, the coolest

Won’t you just shine down?