Bread And Butter - The Roots

Yeah, through the sirens, the lights is blinding

Battle cries sound off, warriors dying

Last call at the bar for snakes and tyrants

Hands up, that’s a massacre the cops kept firing

Run amok, keep y’all eternally crying

Fed up, place red stains on global giants

The brain of an Orson Welles

Stuck in a masterpiece, Citizen Kane’s personal hell

It’s done, and it’s hot where them hustlers dwell

And the air bears the stench of a corpse’s smell

Homie down on his luck one foot in the jail

And he down to his last with a quarter to sell

This right here, world premiere of the last days

The final paragraphs to the book’s last page

You could feel it coming, no running away

Let’s get free or let’s get paid

Same shit different day

The cornerstone to where I lay

It’s shattered glass and crack bags where they play

And scattered ass is passed in ridiculous ways

These cats Chef like they Isaac Hayes

Parallel to the grave

Stuck in the game with no rules

And we screaming for some water and some edible food

Man I’m right there, rabbit ears, nothing to lose

This is what you ain’t learning in school

I’m trying to tell you it’s hard

A loaf of bread, milk and eggs, stick of butter man

Somebody’s mother lies dead in the gutter

Sheriff down by them heads, talking that Gullah

Tell the kids don’t look under those covers, man

Check it out

A child is born, his mother is gone

He in the middle of it literally, tussling strong

For his life, the tide high in the eye of the storm

A mannish boy arrive and the riot is on

With no spare time to try to respond

Or prepare times, it’s hard not becoming a headline

Or praying in the night when it’s bedtime

Or laying your head down

Cuz you already know what it is now

You know a lot of leaders ain’t honest

And they can’t keep a promise

And I hate to speak about it but it’s all freakanomics

Cramped and proud of it, you amped and you rowdy

Treading water trying to lift up your head without drowning

This type of shit can make your heart stop pounding

But you pushing for the top, too scared to stop

Now it gets deep, bodies are floating around in the streets

Lot of people who won’t even be around in a week

Man, get the operation gone, what y’all waiting on?

We been patient, y’all mo’fuckas taking long

The television getting all the information wrong

Doing how they do it getting they mis-education on

They already late

Somebody been was 'posed to regulate

Instead of wait before they let the levee break

You try running from the truth but it’s giving chase

I got to ask myself, yo, is any nigga safe?