You Grew Up - Oddisee

Let me take it back to my childhood

When Six Flags was still called Wild Wood

Where I had every race as a neighbor and

We was working class, trying to make it out of our hood

My best friend back then was a white kid

We was tight, he liked the same things I did

Despite us being different colors, man

We was tight as Elmer’s, and we called each other brothers

While I was trying to keep my Nikes clean

He was trying to scuff his Chucks up

He was grunge, I was fresh, we were young

And we cuss along to rap trying to sneaking into punk clubs

But things changed when his pops got laid off

He blamed my father for the loss of his job

He said immigrants robbed citizens jobs

And I better never set foot again in his yard

As we became adults in a cult called America, he got himself a job as an

officer of law

My thoughts got blacker and his views got cracker

There was no way backwards, to the roots at heart

Many years apart, I recognized him in the news

He shot a black man that was sitting in his car

Near the same park where we used to shoot hoops

And all I could blame was the cause

You grew up

No, you didn’t change

You were made the same

As those before you came

You grew up

All our growing pains

Were given like our names

You just bought the blame

You grew up

No, you didn’t change

You were made the same

As those before you came

You grew up

All our growing pains

Were given like our names

You just bought the blame

You grew up

You ever have a friend that became a fanatic?

Most of you all haven’t, but if you ever did

You’d understand the one thing they all have in common

That somebody took advantage of their damage as a kid

I knew a guy whose folks were professors

Proof in the flesh that Allah was a blesser

Grew up in a mid-western town, where there weren’t many brown people he could

seek reflection

Got picked on in school during lectures

Graduated hating everybody in his class

Picked on because he prayed at five to the East

And he didn’t eat meat that Allah said was bad

One day, a man approached him in a mosque

Changed his life when he asked him a question

«Do you ever feel your life was a loss?

And what if I could teach you that life is a weapon?»

Attracted strong to the feeling of acceptance

He was soon gone with delusions of a cause

People of the present had faces of the past, make it easier to blast them if he

feel they did him wrong

You can raise a child in a house full of love

But can’t keep them safe in a world full of hate

So, he blew up

The only mistake that could hold all the blame

You grew up

No, you didn’t change

You were made the same

As those before you came

You grew up

All our growing pains

Were given like our names

You just bought the blame

You grew up

No, you didn’t change

You were made the same

As those before you came

You grew up

All our growing pains

Were given like our names

You just bought the blame

You grew up

My heart’s a jug and, when I was born, it was filled with love

It ranneth over, life ran me over, I spilled the blood

I poured the cups and I left it up to you to say enough

Never ending, never quenching, I sealed it up

Tried to change my reality, but settled for, real enough

Life is better when you’re thinking lesser, go on, give it up

When I was younger, I was so determined I would change it all Couldn’t fly,

but wasn’t chained to fall

So where is it I put the blame and cause

Well, I grew up