Today, I’mma break down one thing black people have in abundance:
swag, sauce, ashe
It goes by different names
But the idea remains the same
We perform
Savants of style
Virtuosos of flavor and flair,
Connoisseurs of cadence
We are masters of aesthetic
The pace of my stride,
the clothes I wear,
the lingo I use,
the tone of my voice:
all scripted,
part of an elaborate PR campaign
Because self-articulation was often the difference between life and death
We had to look dead in the face of white supremacy
And from the terrors of the Atlantic, the mask was born
We understood how white people viewed themselves,
how the world viewed us
We knew this, flipped it, and used it to our advantage;
And though it wasn’t much, it was enough, and we went to work
They thought we were monkeys when we were really chameleons
we knew how to control our image, to stay safe
We donned masks that didn’t flinch, taking satisfaction in the fact that no matter what
They won’t ever see us fold
“You might break my back, but not my spirit”
A time tested coping mechanism
passed down by those who came before us
Survival is the greatest gift of love, after all
And we did much more survive
Afro-beat in France
Dreadlocks in Barcelona
I can hear 808s and a trap snare on every corner of the globe
When we move, on either side of the Atlantic, it makes waves,
Our power is noticed even if never recognized
Look around
We’ve been running this shit
So this goes out to all the heroes that don’t make the history books
Storytellers who couldn’t remember but refused to forget
Those who hummed old songs when they didn’t know the words
who prayed to old gods with new names
who danced old steps and made new ones
who spoke proper in public and forbidden tongues at home
who cooked like mamann did before them
And wouldn’t change for the world
The moun deyo that didn’t need to go to fancy schools,
or learn how to read French
Or get a degree
To keep the spirit alive
The powerful, everyday heroes
From the backcountry, the concrete, the field
To the ancestors unnamed but never forgotten
This is for you
