featuring Gamilah Shabazz
"I was born.."
[Big Daddy Kane]
A black man from the motherland
Speakin a language today most people don't understand
where no one could bother me
cause I had freedom, justice, and equality
But then one day it was tooken away
and I was shipped to the U.S.A.
A young brother, made into a slave
to harvest the midlands and clean the chittlins
Given a new name, new religion
No freedom to vote, not even to make a decision
I saw my peoples, sold raped and took out
The rest of that stuff that Alex Haley talks about
They said I'm not from Asia I'm from Africa
And all the blacks there now are just scavengers
That's the way my mind was poisoned
to believe that in America blacks are inferior
A weak mind and a body of swine
only adds up to being - deaf dumb and blind
Illiterate to who where what and why
So I ask myself: who am I?
"I was born.."
[Big Daddy Kane]
A native New Yorker on the streets
Known for rockin rhymes to real rough beats
that I found in the attic, noisy with static
A sound that made me, a hip-hop fanatic
I made a few songs that sold OK
Never top 20 or plenty airplay
I came out hardcore, flexin cock diesel
Saw a little cash, and pop goes the weasel
I had to make that change and rearrange
my whole rap format, no hardcore rap
So now all the pop charts I rule
over New Kids on the Block and Paula Abdul, huh
I thought I made it, then my song faded
and none of the black stations ever have played it
I tried to blame it on MTV
and say, "Damn, they cold played me for Young MC"
But when you get down to it, I
