Common ft Stevie Wonder: Black America Again

Remarks:

Note: The video starts with the police shooting of Alton Sterling. Nothing graphic, but still hard to take. Skip to the 0:25 mark to avoid it.

The Pandemic Playlist continues. This time it is Common and Stevie Wonder with “Black America Again”. It came out in 2016 but never charted. It was made in reaction to police shootings, but it goes deep enough to apply to Black lives in the pandemic as well.

The lyrics are full of historical references, some of which I have done posts on. Those are linked to in the lyrics below. Also see the 8-minute video Genius Lyrics made where Common talks about the song.

See also:

• songs: the 2010s
• previous pandemic song

Lyrics:

[Common:]
Here we go, here, here we go again
Trayvon‘ll never get to be an older man
Black children, they childhood stole from them
Robbed of our names and our language, stole again
Who stole the soul from black folk?
Same man that stole the lamb from Cheap Black Smoke
And made the whip crackle on our back slow
And made us go through the back door
And rap for black bodies on the slave blocks
Now we slave to the blocks, on ’em we spray shots
Leaving our own to lay in a box
Black mother’s stomachs stay in a knot
We kill each other, it’s part of the plot
I wish the hating will stop (war)
And the battle with us
I know that black lives matter and they matter to us
These are the things we gotta discuss
The new plantation, mass incarceration
Instead of educate, they’d rather convict the kids
As dirty as the water in Flint, the system is
Is it a felony or a misdemeanor
Maria Sharapova making more than Serena
It took Viola Davis to say this
The roles of the help and the gangsters is really all they gave us
We need Avas, Ta-Nehisis, and Cory Bookers
The salt of the Earth to get us off of sugar and greasy foods
I don’t believe the news or radio, stereotypes we refuse
Brainwashed in the cycle to spin
We write our own story, black America again

[Sample – James Brown:]
You know, you know, you know. One way of solving a lot of problems we got is to let a person feel like somebody and a man can’t get himself together until he knows who he is and be proud of what and who he is, and where he come from, and where he come from

[Common:]
Hot damn, black America again
Think of Sandra Bland as I’m staring in the wind
The color of my skin, they comparing it to sin
The darker it gets, the less fairer it has been
The hate that hate made, I inherited it from them
But I ain’t gon’ point the finger, we got anointed singers
Like Nina, Marvin, Billie, Stevie
Need to hear them songs sometimes to believe me
Who freed me? Lincoln or Cadillac
Drinking or battle raps so is it Godspeed that we travel at?
In danger denied on habitat
The guns and dope man y’all can have it back
As a matter of fact, we them lab rats
You build the projects for us now you want your hood back
I guess if you could rap you would express it too
That PTSD, we need professionals
You know what pressure do, it make the pipes bust
From schools to prison y’all, they tryna pipe us
Tell your political parties invite us
Instead of making broke laws to spite us
You know, you know we from a family of fight trust
Fought in your wars and our wars
You put a nigga in Star Wars, maybe you need two
And then, maybe then we’ll believe you
See black people in the future
We wasn’t shipped here to rob and shoot ya
We hold this truth to be self evident
All men and women are created equal, including black Americans

[Sample – James Brown:]
You know, you know, you know. One way of solving a lot of problems we got is to let a person feel like somebody and a man can’t get himself together until he knows who he is and be proud of what and who he is, and where he come from, and where he come from

[Stevie Wonder:]
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story
We are rewriting the black American story

Source: AZ Lyrics.