Nina - Rapsody

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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 meals

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 kettle weight

Know I’m a God MC, 'cause nigga, I made the devil wait

Before I brought hill, 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)