Wake Up - LowKey

Yeah

The year 2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery

These are my views

Hear my words

Listen, listen

I woke up this morning so I had to make a new track

This is the difference between true stories and true facts

This right here is what waking up feels like

This is the difference between real talk and real life

It’s a treacherous road so mind the GAP

Because they try to blur the lines between lies and facts

They told you, it was finished, but that’s all a lie

'Cos there’s children in them sweatshops, some as young as four or five

Check the tongue on your trainers

These slave-made products are brought here to get endorsed by somebody famous

So we think it looks cool

While slaves are stitching footballs in Pakistan

I break it down in a way that other rappers can’t

It’s hard to stop sleeping and wake up, 'cos it’s too real

But if karma doesn’t get you first then the truth will

We’re living in some wild days

According to Unicef there’s 246 million child slaves

So…

Wake up

Open your eyes and listen to this

Cos little innocent kids are stitching them kicks

I’m ticked off, cos we’re living this myth

The devil’s biggest of tricks was convincing the people he didn’t exist

So.

Wake up

You think it ended but it never did

It put the chocolate in our mouth

The logos on our freshest kicks

The logos on our backs, the coffee we drink, almost everything

There’s more slaves on earth right now than there’s ever been

You’re listening to the wrong rappers

Companies use child slaves then blame it all on their subcontractors

Don’t need to guess who sewed those jeans, but who’s buying these clothes

Who gives us cocoa beans from the Ivory Coast?

The answers are Mars, but you don’t need to search the skies

They’re in Asian sweatshops making Mickey Mouse merchandise

Nowadays it’s less to do with the colour of your skin, fam

It’s more to do with the country that you’re in, fam

Won’t stop spitting until there’s a change

Every purchase that we make, keep the children in chains

It’s so twisted and strange to me

Some parents are so poor they sell their own kids into slavery

It’s an ugly state of affairs

Slaves used to pick cotton but now they stitch ticks on the trainers we wear

When they tell you it’s finished, don’t let them

'Cos it’s still here, even though it got abolished in 1807

This is for those who kept faith

And all the children around the globe getting sold as sex slaves

Back in the day it was bad but this is the next phase

Nowadays everything’s in our hands fam, let’s change

In these tragic times, we gotta analyse these rappers rhymes

The fact is they’re blind, and they glamourise a pack of lies

The powers that be got us distracted but we have to fight

'Cos these days it’s not as simple as being black or white

We need to fix our lives and get some unity

'Cos 'til the feds get their weapons, shoot-executing me

Putting me back to sleep is something you could never do to me

Yours truly, Lowkey, the rapper slash revolutionary

Do your research if you don’t believe it still exists

It’s just a matter of how long can we live with it

You could call me a hypocrite

'Cos if you look at my shoe on my foot right now, you’d see a little tick on it