This Bitter Land - Erykah Badu, Nas

This bitter land

Watered with my soul

The fruit it bears

Leaves me so cold

This bitter land

Does nothing for love

This bitter land

Brings pain from above, oh-oh

Yeah, running on the concrete across the train tracks

The devil is behind me

In the ghetto where’s you’ll find me, it’s where I stays at

Cop shot us up, he get a medal then retire

But it never will define me

Write a letter to the president, whoever in control of the society

Tell 'em stop riding me, stop driving us into a suicidal ideology

Tryna feed my seeds

Getting high on weed, study my degrees

Stay fly, getting paper

With some dead white people faces in the circle of spaces around the green

I’ma lean, taking Percs It’s a bitter Earth

Is a nigga cursed?

Am I blessed?

See what I mean

It’s a test, life is a test

Life is like a hood, hard

Trying not to fall between the cracks

In the cracks it’s so dark, and the dark

Seems more appealing than the light in the land

Where you gotta fight

Catch a body in the night, we need a plan

To survive, to survive the land

Survive the storm, when it comes through

Either you’re busy living or busy dying, look what it’s come to

Look what it’s come to, so what you’re gonna do?

This bitter land is far too real

This bitter land, it does not heal

Cause in the land skies are grey

But we fight the storms that come our way

A boy who strives to be a man

Must push to lead with all he can

Oh, this bitter land

Oh, bitter land

Oh, oh, oh, oooh

This bitter land, can’t stop my fight

This bitter land

Look what it’s come to

So what you gonna do?

What you gonna do?

(My land)