The Journey

First

At once

We were people on our land

African feet touch the sand

Free woman and man

Stand tall

Respond call

Conga djembe

We sing a song for our first born

Skin uncovered unashamed original names

We served God through a pantheon, then secular world came

Some prisoners of war betrayed by our own others chained, some sold stolen from

The shores by a foreign man we never seen before, families torn

Put in chains

The chattel slave trade

Black bodies chained, whipped, burned, maimed

Many tongues speaking the same pain

Confused, I cant understand a damn thing

World view rearranged, in el mina’s castle caged, somebody say a ship came

Forced board. Feet lusting for my soil, what the fuck is going on?

Aint I a woman?

Somebody just jumped overboard

Cross the atlantic, skin branded, left stranded, laid in fractions

Heart in fragments, captured, deemed as savage, pull my body backwards

No chords could strum the root of my pain/they set the journey aflame

Second

White man

Crush my womb. Shattered. Scraped, raped. Battered

Another miscarrage. Another baby born to a world of shackles

Fire crackers, havin flash blacks. The middle passage

Spoon fashioned, semen, blood, urine, dragging. Human organs splattered

Scattered cross caribbean. Carolina

Reduced to fractions divided by my black vagina

Enter in the battle, in this so-called new world

Look at this niggergirl on iriquois/pequot earth

(Turn around) u up first

Smile, teeth strong, assess my worth

On the auction block, they say I'm ripe for birth, strong stock, look at my buttocks

Hair like wire u need brush not

Nothin pretty to rub hot

Behind my chest heart beats the first seeds of hip hop

Fire burnin rage is, gun cocked

My water breaks. The beat drops

Mic chords bind me. Stop rewind me

Let my memories rock, enemies drop

Oh lord, let us fast forward. Promise to let my tape rock

And it wont stop

No chords could strum the root of my pain/they set the journey aflame

Third

Sometimes I want war for these muthafuckas

And I'm restrained, nigger, negro, colored, nigra, bitch, hoe

Mammy, harlot, minstrel

Aunt jemima kinfolk

Nicki minaj instrumental

Sista stomp hard! But we forced to tip toe

Three-fifths of a human, twofifths cause you woman

Abandoned oshun, praying for christ second coming

Jiving, shuckin corn, word is bond

Used to sing work-songs about being free

Now freedom comes wrapped in porn

Buying european wigs, italian designers

Manolo blahnik, gucci and prada

Somebody baby mama

Rhyme about the dollar

Identity draped in male desire

The illusion of free, but we for hire, lost in buying power

Who got it made? Last week we was the maid

Breast-feeding white babies

They grow, sell our children as slaves

Billie holiday, hang from maple trees

A game of make-believe

Log on to facebook, forget the rape of centuries

Grammar stays in present perfect

But us, we simple past on it

Degraded by our brothers, they say shake your ass on it

Constructed before the white face

Now its music on my space

Body parts separated from soul

Bought and sold

Nothing new though

My question crucial

Whats the worth of a black woman, who go

Cross the atlantic, stranded

On plantations

Projects

College loan payments

Exploited, captured and framed in

White imagination

Black male sex arrangements

Christian names

Master’s house the first stage

That made my body famous

Beauty caged in

Tainted

Behind the lust for blue eyes and blond manes and I'm saying

It started with that slave ship that set the journey flaming

No chords could strum the root of my pain/they set the journey aflame