Endangered Black Woman - Robert Glasper, Andra Day, Staceyann Chin

How can you see

By the dawn of creation

I’m the queen of all queens

I gave birth to all nations

But y’all don’t care about me

If I ain’t standing here naked

You can’t have it for free

And you can’t come and just take it

My body, my choice

My temple, my doctrine

My mind and my voice

My rights and my options

Fuck at all with your rules

Not concerned with your judgments

You ain’t God or my king

Shit, you ain’t even my husband

But who would you be without me?

Baby, what’s clarity without the moon?

You wanna control everything

So you never have to control you

Let a nigga come in

Try and sit on my table

And only came with a fork

Trynna leave with the neighbor

Now because of my joy

I’m just 'posed to stay dribbling?

Nigga, I’m so confused

Is this what you call winning?

But hey, how you gon' shoot without me?

See dust can’t clump til something make it move

You wanna control everything

Imma just toss this into the womb

Everybody with whom we have come into contact has systematically taken

advantage of us

History is only a testimony to our ability to make music from noise

Just watch how we move when we’re moving

How we keep loving unworthy partners

Raising children with little help from anybody

No love, no respect from the suspicious white woman who criticizes the way we

mother our children while they pay us almost nothing for mothering theirs

I don’t even have time to address the fetishized hatred we endure from white men

So you’ll forgive me if I don’t give a fuck about your cooperation of feelings

Fuck you for wanting me to hold you while you sink your racist, sexist knives

into my already bleeding back

Fuck you for needing me to absolve you or your many many sins against me

Fuck you for putting everybody’s needs before my own: black men, white men,

black women, the fucking dog, the cat, my boss, the neighbor’s rabbit,

the fucking government, the endangered fucking turtles.

Why are everybody’s

needs more urgent than my own, when do we worry about me, my feelings, my needs,

my rights, my body, my safety, my fucking life

When do we begin to send to the endangered black woman

I am thinking the time is now and saying the time is now

Not tomorrow, not next week, not fucking next year

I say we begin here, now, today, this minute and say: Fuck your countless

indifference, your hesitation, my time is now, my feelings are now,

make time for them, make space for them, deal with your race shit,

your gender shit, your sexuality shit now before we set fire to everything we

take care of for you, set fire to everything and watch the whole lot of it burn