SUNDOWN TOWN Lyrics

My daddy nose wider

Than a Houston highway

All the women in my fam

Pledged AKA

All men in my fam

Pledged K-A-Psi

I'm the first to enroll

At PWI

Yeah I'm light

But melanin strong denna bitch

I don't burn, I just tan

I peep the gold-brown skin

Wish I could go

Back to Ghana without a hitch

But slave ships cut ties

I don't know how to mend

I would follow the bread trail

Of black bodies

But those crumbs were laid

400 years ago

I got a record

I am just another black body

That the system tried to swallow up

Years ago

I was 19

When it all went down

Imma criminal

My momma was astounded

But when you raise me in a city

Where there's nothing to find

You leave all these kids of color

To find hobbies in crime

And I just followed the line

I see the locs and the slimes

On my shady five shit

But I still focused on rhymes

We can't go to the mall

Set trips cause stabs

Unless you wit an adult

That shit just isn't for grabs

Nothing safe to fade

Not even fucking arcades

Hit that shit for birthday

And someone flashed a .38

They pulled a gun on my homie

Just right after I left

Sometimes this feels like

Grand Auto Theft

One of my uncles disappeared

In a sundown town

That's why I feel some type of way

When the sun go down

I got a target on my body

Cuz my skin so brown

These republicans

Tryna make me rot in the pound

Can't trust white people

When I see em around

That's why I feel some type of way

When the sun go down

Sun go down

Sundown town

This whole fucking country

Is a sundown

Whole fucking country

Is a sundown

This whole fucking country

Is a sundown

Sun go down

Sundown town

This whole fucking country

Is a sundown

Whole fucking country

Is a sundown

This whole fucking country

Is a sundown

Go and peep the constitution

I'm 3/5ths of a human

And they claim it's changed

But when I see they sin

Made us addicted to this crack

Told us to wash it with gin

Set us up to shoot each other

Cops don't even come in

We don't get first response

We don't get one at all

Silent treatment

Unless you can go and dribble a ball

Less you can pull up from three

But don't get down on your knee

They'll take away your contract

And let you sleep in the street

They say my lips too thick

They overdrawing they shit

They say my hair too kinked

But all they ends be split

They call me a monkey

But they be spraying they tan

Claim that they got a culture

But they don't season they pans

They wanna be vultures

They picking bones in the sand

They write history books

So they gon say we were friends

They killed the black panthers

Called them the terrorist clan

That's why I got up on this beat

And went Assata again

One of my uncles disappeared

In a sundown town

That's why I feel some type of way

When the sun go down

I got a target on my body

Cuz my skin so brown

These republicans

Tryna make me rot in the pound

Can't trust white people

When I see em around

That's why I feel some type of way

When the sun go down

Sun go down

Sundown town

This whole fucking country

Is a sundown

Whole fucking country

Is a sundown

This whole fucking country

Is a sundown

Sun go down

Sundown town

This whole fucking country

Is a sundown

Whole fucking country

Is a sundown

This whole fucking country

Is a sundown

I am 107 years old and have never been, seen justice

I pray that one day I will

I have been blessed with a long life and have seen the best and the worst of this country

I think about the terror, horror inflicted upon black people in this country every day

And I ask survivors and descendants to be given the chance to seek justice

For 70 years the city of Tulsa and this chambers of commerce told us the massacre didn't happen

Like we didn't see it with our own eyes

We lost everything that day: our homes, our churches, our newspapers, our theaters, our lives

Greenwood represented all the best of what was possible for black people in America

No one cared about us for almost 100 years

We and our history have been forgotten and washed away

This congress must recognize us and our history for black America, for the white Americans, and for all Americans

Thank you