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Comment #1

Gil Scott-Heron
Langue: anglais


Gil Scott-Heron

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In a 1970 spoken-word poem off his debut album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, musician Gil Scott-Heron takes aim at the (predominantly white) student movement and its claim to represent “radical” change. He pours cold water on the idea that there could be a meaningful alliance between the white New Left and radical organizations of color, because middle-class and upper-class whites are simply incapable of understanding the struggles of the poor and disadvantaged.

Kanye West sampled this song in “Who Will Survive In America”, ending the album with the same message as GSH did

Genius
Poem here says, Comment #1
Uh, Comment #2 is dynamite
But Comment #1 is the one we decided
To use here this evening
Because it makes a comment if you listen
Closely on what is now being advertised
In East Harlem as the "Rainbow Conspiracy" - a combination of
The Students For A Democratic Society
The Black Panthers, and the Young Lords
And this is my particular comment about that conspiracy, "Comment #1":

The time is in the street you know
Us living as we do upside down
And the new word to have is revolution
People don't even want to hear the preacher spill or spiel
Because God's hole card has been thoroughly piqued
And America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey
The youngsters who were programmed
To continue fucking up woke up one night
Digging Paul Revere and Nat Turner as the good guys. America stripped
For bed and we had not all yet closed our eyes. The signs of Truth
Were tattooed across our often-entered vagina
We learned to our amazement untold tale of scandal
Two long centuries buried in the musty vault
Hosed down daily with a gagging perfume
America was a bastard the illegitimate daughter
Of the mother country whose legs
Were then spread around the world
And a rapist known as freedom: free doom
Democracy, liberty, and justice were
Revolutionary code names that preceded
The bubbling bubbling bubbling bubbling
Bubbling in the mother country's crotch
And behold a baby girl was born
Nurtured by slave holders and whitey racists
It grew and grew and grew screwing
Indiscriminately like mother, like daughter
Everything unplagued by her madame mother
The present mocks us, good Black people
With keen memories set fire to the bastards
Who ask us in a whisper to melt and integrate
Young, very young, teeny
Bopping revolt on weekend young dig
By proxy what a mental ass kicking
They receive through institutionalized everything
And vomit up slogans to stay out of Vietnam
They seek to hide their relationship with the world's prostitute
Alienating themselves from everything
Except dirt and money with long hair, grime, and dope
To camo-hide the things that cannot be hidden
They become runaway children to walk the streets downtown with everyday
Black people sitting on the curb
Crying because we know that they will go back
Home with a clear conscience and a college degree
The irony of it all, of course
Is when a pale face SDS motherfucker dares
Look hurt when I tell him to go find his own revolution
He wonders why I tell him that America's revolution
Will not be the melting pot but the toilet bowl
He is fighting for legalized smoke, or lower voting age
Less lip from his generation gap and fucking in the street
Where is my parallel to that?
All I want is a good home and a wife and a children
And some food to feed them every night
Back goes pale face to basics
Does Little Orphan Annie have a natural?
Do Sluggo's kinks make him a refugee from Mandingo?
What does Webster's say about soul?
I say you silly trite motherfucker, your great grandfather
Tied a ball and chain to my balls
And bounced me through a cotton field
While I lived in an unflushable toilet bowl
And now you want me to help you overthrow what?
The only Truth that can be delivered to a four year
Revolutionary with a hole card i.e. skin is this:
Fuck up what you can in the name of
Piggy Wallace, Dickless Nixon, and Spiro Agnew
Leave brother Cleaver and Brother Malcolm alone please
After all is said and done build a new route to China if they'll have you
Who will survive in America?

4/6/2020 - 22:34



Langue: anglais

La versione campionata da Kanye West

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)

WHO WILL SURVIVE IN AMERICA

Us living as we do upside-down
And the new word to have is revolution
People don't even want to hear the preacher spill or spiel
Because God's whole card has been thoroughly piqued
And America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey
The youngsters who were programmed
To continue fucking up woke up one night
Digging Paul Revere and Nat Turner as the good guys
America stripped for bed and we had not all yet closed our eyes
The signs of truth were tattooed across our often entered vagina
We learned to our amazement, the untold tale of scandal
Two long centuries buried in the musty vault
Hosed down daily with a gagging perfume
America was a bastard
The illegitimate daughter of the mother country
Whose legs were then spread around the world
And a rapist known as freedom; free-doom
Democracy, liberty, and justice were revolutionary code names
That preceded the bubbling, bubbling, bubbling, bubbling, bubbling
In the mother country's crotch
What does Webster say about soul?
"All I want is a good home and a wife
And a children, and some food to feed them every night"
After all is said and done, build a new route to China if they'll have you

Who will survive in America?
Who will survive in America?
Who will survive in America?
Who will survive in America?

4/6/2020 - 22:38




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