lyrics
Live from Al-Jazeera
Featuring Amitava Kumar
Verse 1
On behalf of the unruliest hooligan mob,
Malcontent with a pen, Rap’s Julian Assange,
Underground, off air, no bombs by Funk Flex
My shit bump in suicide trucks of some sub sects
(Burning Tires….)
From Madras to Mombasa,
They harass us in our casa
Sayin’ ‘you Hamas, huh?’—Yeah, like I learned to rap in a fucking Madrassa,
Making bomb music like the sounds of scuds past ya
(Burning Tires)
All I got to show for it—
Precondition, I’m ill, someone tell me where COBRA is,
No Medicare, I medicate on six packs of beer
Hit the street with kerosene and light whatever’s near
(Burning Tires)
…and effigies ablaze, kill your idols,
whether Pop, Politics, or some god,
The name’s Chirag, faceless face in the mob,
Cancel checks(Czechs) you endorse like abortions in Prague
Chorus
Verse 2
Still Live from Al-Jazeera: subtitled, grainy pixeled
Voice of Brown, homegrown yet strangely distant
They can’t reconcile my style, speech, and my ‘staani tan
American passport, face like a Taliban
…Screamin’ ‘Ali for Imam’
hit the stage with K.M. Hassan, give ya’ll the Saddam wave
Chem Ali’s gassin’ ‘em—stages turn to mass graves
House rage offa subprime rate.
Narration (Amitava Kumar)
I’m telling you this here so that you can see how ordinary men and women whose lives are entangled in the war on terror tell stories about themselves and their place in the world. Theirs are stories that bring together, whether as acts of fancy or as pictures of grim reality, different parts of our divided world.
Verse 3
We don’t shuck and jive for pay, mortgage heaven
And sell a preacher hell
Stroll through perdition in Adidas Shells
Old ass rappers trying to cast a Bieber spell
I speak 16’s that wake up sleeper cells—
We young, Brown, and stressed, long noses, hooded eyelids
Articulate, yeah—with names on No Fly Lists
But life is hard, why go at it easy?
For the fruits of my labor, peace to Mohammed Bouazizi.
Narration (Amitava Kumar)
Of course, as any writer knows, a story might begin at one place and then through an extraordinary, unexpected turn end up somewhere else entirely....The individual vanishes in a dark place of secrets. Or we watch him disappear on the brazen stage of propaganda. The particulars of an individual life are sometimes all that we have as a precious lifeline to firm reality.
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