Brother Ali - Letter To My Countrymen lyrics

rate me

Sooner or later, sooner or later

Ah, I used to think I hated this place

Couldn’t wait to tell the president straight to his face

But lately I’ve changed, nowadays I embrace it all

Beautiful ideals and amazing flaws

Gotta care enough to give a testament

About the deeply deep pressing mess we’re in

It’s home so we better make the best of it

I wanna make this country what it says it is

Still dreaming in vivid it’s living color

No matter how many times my love’s been smothered

Who’s ever above us, won’t just let us suffer

All of this struggling gotta amount to something

This is a letter to my countrymen, specially those my age and younger then

We’re up against the … everybody hustling, don’t nobody touch their friends

No group singing and dancing, no anthems

Nobody holds hands and

Instead they give a hand held, to make you sure that life

Is burden by your damn self

One thing that can’t be debated,

Power never changed on its own you gotta make it

That’s why community it’s so sacred

Past the symbol that we make when we raise flags

Sooner or later, sooner or later

We don’t really like to talk about the race thing

The whole grandparents, used to own slave things

Pat ourselves in the back in February

Looking at pictures of Abe Lincoln and the great king

But the real picture’s much more embarrassing

We’re still not even close to even sharing things

The situation of oppressed people, shows what we feel

It means to be human beings

What does it mean to be American?

I think the struggle to be free is our inheritance

And if we say it how it really is

We know our …stand still give us privilege

Advantages, given to the few, that are built into the roots

Of our biggest institutions,

That’s the truth in life we gotta choose

Do I fight in the movement or think I’m entitled to

This is not the practice life, this is the big game, we gotta attack it right

Each one of us is headed for the grave, this old crooked world

Won’t be saved by the passive type

This is a letter to my countrymen, not from a democrat or a republican

But one among them, that’s why you call me brother

Ain’t scared to tell you we’re in trouble, cause I love you

Sooner or later, sooner or later

They tell me I’m a dreamer, they ridicule

They feel defeated, old, bitter and cynical

Excuse me, but I see it from a different view

I still believe in what a driven few can really do

I know that the masses wanna sleep

And they would rather hear me rapping to the beat

But I wanna pass this planet to my son

A little better than it was when they handed it to me, so

I wrote a letter to my countrymen

I’ll be happy if it only reaches one of them

Reporting live Ali, your brother

Mourning in America, Dreaming in Colors.