Nina

Southern trees, bearing strange fruit
Blood on the leaves (blood on the leaves)
And blood at the roots (and blood at the roots)
Check
So bleed

Emit light rap, or emit Till
I drew a line without showing my body, that's a skill
Bad to the bone and the grill
You'd be dead wrong if looks kill
I'm still on my spiel, in the spirit of L Hill
Eye on the sparrow
Nose like a pharaoh's
Our blood line trill
For the young and all the Lil's
We all gon' get mills
Talk a lotta game
But we get paid too, like Jemele
Was raised upon a hill, the valley's a sunken place
I'm just tryna build like I came with some ghetto weight
Know I'm a God MC, 'cause nigga, I made the devil wait
Before I brought hell, you ain't gotta tell me I'm hella great
I don't speak on it nowadays, I just meditate
Y'all can have the bars nigga, I spit hard metal gates
Henry Louis Gates when I cop me some new estate (cop)
Make room for myself, I'm in a way different mental place
I keep it real, all y'all look anime
I'm fine like Anna Mae
Black don't crack like Angela
Black and brave like in the A
It don't come with apologies
Let's just tip in some Andre
When you greet me it's "Namaste"
Spread love the Brooklyn way or like marmalade
No matter if you street street, or more like the promenade
We gotta come together like the corn and the dookie braids
For the present and future days, I say what I gotta say
I am Nina and Roberta, the one you love but ain't heard of
Got my middle finger up like Pac after attempted murder
Failed to kill me, it's still me
Woke up singing Shirley Murdock
As we lay these edges down, brown women, we so perfect
Went from field nigga to still nigga
Being cropped out the picture
But we all know who got the juice, my sisters
Imitating us in all the Hollywood pictures
And still, they'll never be us, nigga, nigga
I'm from the back woods where Nina would
Sing about the life we should lead
A new dawn, another deed, I try to do some good
I felt more damned than Mississippi was
They deny Nina in Philadelphia
And still we persevere like all the 400 years of our own blood
Africa, old panthers lookin' back like who gon' come up after us?
Outside the movies, I make sure before it move you
It moved me, now bow down to a queen please
Survival

Here's to the honey in you, to the bittersweet in me
I will shed this blood so romantically, so viciously, quiet
Here's to a moment of silence
I've poured and poured my soul again, here's to epiphanies
There was never a we, there was a you all and there was me
And this war, likely to succeed
Unlike me to surrender
Trying and dying to breathe poetry to rise the light of day
To subconsciously exist cautiously ascending towards freedom
Praying for a breather
Do you see my pain?
Do I seem like prey?
Empathy be the reason you're still standing
We are not the same
I've lived more lives than you, I have less pride than you
I'm extra-terrestrial, I was created different
I've been here many times before and I've never been defeated
And still, I will never be defeated (defeated)