H.E.R.: I Can’t Breathe

Remarks:

This came out in 2020 during the George Floyd protests, going to #20 on the US R&B chart. The title comes from George Floyd’s last words, which in turn echo Eric Garner’s. Last weekend the song won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year.

See also:

• songs: the 2020s
• The extremely incomplete list of unarmed Blacks killed by police
  • Eric Garner
  • George Floyd
    • The George Floyd protests
• H.E.R.:
  • 2017: H.E.R.: Focus
  • 2018: Daniel Caesar ft H.E.R.: Best Part
  • 2019: H.E.R.: Hard Place
• Grammy Song of the Year (those I have posted):
  • 1962: Henry Mancini: Moon River
  • 1973: Roberta Flack: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
  • 1975: Barbra Streisand: The Way We Were
  • 1995: Bruce Springsteen: Streets of Philadelphia
  • 2002: Alicia Keys: Fallin’
  • 2003: Norah Jones: Don’t Know Why
  • 2017: Adele: Hello
  • 2019: Childish Gambino: This Is America

Lyrics:

[Intro]
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Nah

[Verse 1]
Starting a war, screaming “Peace” at the same time
All the corruption, injustice, the same crimes
Always a problem if we do or don’t fight
And we die, we don’t have the same right
What is a gun to a man that surrenders?
What’s it gonna take for someone to defend her?
If we all agree that we’re equal as people
Then why can’t we see what is evil?

[Chorus]
I can’t breathe
You’re taking my life from me
I can’t breathe
Will anyone fight for me?

[Post-Chorus]
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh

[Verse 2]
How do we cope when we don’t love each other?
Where is the hope and the empathy? (Yeah)
How do we judge off the color?
The structure was made to make us the enemy (Yeah)
Prayin’ for change ’cause the pain makes you tender
All of the names you refuse to remember
Was somebody’s brother, friend
Or a son to a mother that’s crying, singing

[Chorus]
I can’t breathe
You’re taking my life from me
I can’t breathe
Will anyone fight for me? (Yeah)

[Post-Chorus]
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Will anyone fight for me?
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh (For me)

[Verse 3]
Trying times all the time
Destruction of minds, bodies, and human rights
Stripped of bloodlines, whipped and confined
This is the American pride
It’s justifying a genocide
Romanticizing the theft and bloodshed
That made America the land of the free
To take a black life, land of the free
To bring a gun to a peaceful fight for civil rights
You are desensitized to pulling triggers on innocent lives
Because that’s how we got here in the first place
These wounds sink deeper than the bullet
Your entitled hands could ever reach
Generations and generations of pain, fear, and anxiety
Equality is walking without intuition
Saying the protector and the killer is wearing the same uniform
The revolution is not televised
Media perception is forced down the throats of closed minds
So it’s lies in the headlines
And generations of supremacy resulting in your ignorant, privileged eyes
We breathe the same and we bleed the same
But still, we don’t see the same
Be thankful we are God-fearing
Because we do not seek revenge
We seek justice, we are past fear
We are fed up eating your shit
Because you think your so-called “black friend”
Validates your wokeness and erases your racism
That kind of uncomfortable conversation is too hard for your trust-fund pockets to swallow
To swallow the strange fruit hanging from my family tree
Because of your audacity
To say all men are created equal in the eyes of God
But disparage a man based on the color of his skin
Do not say you do not see color
When you see us, see us
We can’t breathe

[Outro]
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh

Source: Genius Lyrics.