Let Me Live

by Lend Me Your Ear

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about

A forward from the songwriter, Klein Klimp:

When I first started writing this song, I was going through a lot of emotions. Police murdered another black man... Two, in fact. On back to back days. It was July of 2016, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were just assassinated. The news was soul-crushing. Where’s the justice?

“This must be a bad dream,” I thought. “A nightmare my people can't wake up from.” I was frustrated, and the thought of this happening again to people who look like me, made me furious.

Maybe even sadder, I went from that shock to thinking "I know these sorry-ass racist cops gonna get off.” Here we go again.

“Lord, why?” I thought. “Fuck those cops and racist white folks.

So, there I was, in my parked car with my 4, almost 5-year old son. Crying in anger and hitting the steering wheel, screaming. They keep killing us like dogs in the streets.

I wrote: “The boys in blue will gun you down. The boys in blue will choke you out.”

This song comes from pain, hate, struggles, and the reality of black people living in fear everyday. The people who are sworn in to serve and protect the community, are assassinating us. These crooked cops are nothing but today's lynch mob. They've traded in their white sheets for blue shields. They kill us because the country doesn't give a damn about 3/5 of a person. People with my skin tone live by a different set of rules.

George Floyd.

The emotions in Let Me Live are raw, uncut and my truth. I no longer want to look in the mirror and ask what's wrong with me. Black America, we have a problem. We are both Martin and Malcolm. These racist cops are knocking down the door, and Malcolm is going to answer.

Where's the progression? I'm still a negro in their eyes. Just let me live.

Give us a sit at the Freedom Table. We've paid our dues in blood.

lyrics

[Intro]

Yeah yeah...
Outta this world
Can you hear us
Outta this world
Can you hear us

The boys in Blue will gun you down
Before you make your minimum wage
And we ain't talking 50's here
Or 60's here, Naw

Color folk we talking today
Just let me live
They want me to lighten my skin, naw
Live among these darkest days

[Klein Klimp's Verse]

Talking about the social injustice
Up in our solar system
Blacken out get christen
Your missing up in your solar system
Listen, talk verbatim, cranking in your cranium
Into your sternum, don't you feel the wordsmith
Are you smelling what I'm burning

If the currency, is current, paint us on the canvas
My artwork is versed, the 'vantage point
Can be random, leaving you in shambles
I scramble, Durantchalla (Warriors)
I bay them, then slay them, to enslave them (Come out and Play)

My cadence on Vibranium
An alien among us
I don't just, never-mind, this nevertheless
You can spark it up, when we walk around,
some other time, some other rhyme
Lord I see ya present in the sunshine
But I'm tired of

Working for 'em, work for nothing
Worth for nothing, dirty dishes
work for nothing, all submissive
all the misses, mind your business
Call the Mrs., huh
Not working, all submissive
But you call the Mrs.
What is too Black in your Cadillac
If you ain't get there, presence you prepare for
Sunrise to the son ride
You dry eyes on the clothes Line
That's old school, we crossing out that old rue
An eye for an eye
You shoot me and I shoot you
What if I don't get you
The pigmentation in my skin
Is locked into a box

Before they check it
grab they words, Wordsmith
huh, The Wordsmith, Klein Klimp
I had to Bless this
The boys in Blue will gun you down
Before you make your minimum wage
And we ain't talking 50's here
Or 60's here, Naw

Color folk we talking today

Just let me live
They want me to lighten my skin, Naw
Live among these darkest days, oooohhh

Hook

The boys in Blue will gun you down
Before you make your minimum wage
And we ain't talking 50's here
Or 60's here, Naw

Color folk we talking today
Just let me live
They want me to lighten my skin, Naw
Live among these darkest days