I want my city to be the #1 place
For black men to thrive,
Not the #1 place for black men to die

We not only fail to live but we fail to try
How come we continue to do wrong
When we know deep inside what’s right

Right in front of your eyes
You must realize that reality
Is not skin deep
Penetrating into your veins that leads
To your heart
Infiltrating into your brain is what you
Wish you would’ve known from the start

Start taking control of the thoughts in your mind
Before the thoughts in your mind take control of you

Fix your thoughts
Because your thoughts can break you
Strive for success no matter how many
Failures it takes you
Look at all your haters
And tell ‘em they didn’t make you

Our youth are so dead on the inside
Waking up only wanting to go back to sleep
Wishing their harsh reality was simply a bad dream
Wishing their dreams weren’t hindered
By what life seems to throw at them

I came to this world with something to give
But life circumstances have taken away
My every motivation to live

Help us
But more importantly
Help us to help ourselves

Instead of pornography and shallow magazines
They should be selling purpose on the shelves

Help us to help ourselves

We can’t give up just because life’s not fair
Why does it seem that some parents just don’t care
About their kids running the streets since the age of daycare

You just got out of diapers, why are you killing people?
Joined a gang at 13 so now your family’s villain people

Help us to help ourselves

And ladies
You are a queen in the making
But I must admit that sometimes your actions
Can easily be mistaken

Prostituting yourself to keep up with
The American dream
And I ask you
Who are you without the material things

What’s deep inside when you look past
The glitter and the gleam?

You are not an item
So no I won’t call you Miss Thing
Because things can be sold

Don’t believe the lies you’ve been told
Will somebody please relay
This message to the girls in the videos?

I’m giving a role call
Not to the video vixens
But to the real models
The role models
The won’t drop it low on the pole models
The won’t give it up just ‘cause he can
Shoot a free throw models
The “no” means “no” models

These are the real models
The people who keep it real
When everybody else
Is trying to be a carbon copy
Losing yourself trying to be
Everything to everybody

And these suicide rates
Don’t apply to everybody
But I knew girls who shrank
Their lives because they
Couldn’t shrink their bodies

Cemeteries filled with corpses
Of people who never
Realized their true potential

We need more role models to be influential
Because somebody has to tell you that
Your life is essential

Because even when your actions
Can sometimes be mistaken
You are STILL
A queen in the making

But I realize that these things take time
Because sometimes things are

Too touching
To tell two times two
Timber to the treacherous trees
Trying to terminate the truth

Innermost insides
Inclined in intuition
Incubating ingenious ideas
Involving imagination

Motivating more meritable men
Modeling maturity
Moving mountains
Ministering momentum

Exceptional
Ethically entrenched
Exclusively effecting
Entwined earthly entities

Eternally being
Mindful that
It all takes
Time

And we’re running out of it quickly

I wish I could turn back the hourglass of life
Stop, pause, fast forward, and rewind
But all the time I lost
I only get back in my mind

So help us
But more importantly
Help us to help ourselves