What does it mean to be free?

I look down to my hands and my feet and what do I see?

Not shackles, not chains, not confederate flags,

not the fields and not the pains

Of my ancestor who were slain

Who worked in the sun and in the rain

What does it mean to be free?

Does it mean to go to college and get a degree?

Does it mean to live with your head held high and your eyes wide shut?

To live with that uneasiness way down in your gut

To keep your mouth shut and your head off the platter

To many, it seems they’d rather do the latter

What does it mean to be free?

Momma never told me, that’s something that in her lifetime she probably never got to see

Something in her lifetime she never got to be

You can take the shackles off a person and they still won’t be free

Because you destroyed their minds years ago to an insurmountable degree

You, you wretched system

You took my culture, took my last name

You try to steal all my remakes but that’s all in vain

You hate me, and you wish I’d fall

You wish I never find freedom but I got the wake up call

You keep chasing me, like my name’s David, and yours is Saul

Because for decades that wretched system put the necks of my people up against a wall

But I got my hands up, I’m ready for a brawl

Yeah I’m ready to do it all

I’m ready to throw you like a football

But best believe I’m coming for you last like an 8 ball

Because you see, for far too long I’ve been trying to be free

And all along you keep promising me

All the freedom I could want at just a small fee

The fee Martin Luther King jr, he paid in blood

The fee that Malcom X paid in blood

The fee that Emmit Til paid in blood

The fee that Trayvon Martin paid in blood

And now here we are, trying to get what’s been promised

And what will it take us, more blood?