We Are The Landlords

Elena Willis - Aberfan 1966 (2007)

Take a minute out of your day to mourn a child and a set of human parents. Mourn the hope you know in your heart and don't see in your arms. Do you ever wonder why coal waste exists to engulf and suffocate? Or rain to crash levees and drown? Because our blood is ocean, our skin oil. Because we are participants in a ritual larger than the tragedies we think are the end. We are the essence of the hope we mourn, not the mourning. Place no blame, point no fingers, take your aim.

Are you afraid to have someone believe in you?
Can you commit to your ideals?
Even if you think nothing of it,
are you willing to allow others to think the world of it,
and of you?
Pedagogue of Young Gods.

All slavery ever does is free you.
All anyone ever does is an example.
All power is just collective energy.
To abuse the privilege is to sell your soul
and that is to rent with the illusion of owning.
We are the landlords.
If you misunderstand us,
you're dead and deserve your demise.
Your dominion is your overthrow.
The controllers are controlled.
Spread the word,
it will save you
and depends on you to be understood.
There is no school bell, only nursery.
Our heroes reward us with stars,
ever-still, ever-moving.
We sing to ourselves in our cars.
Music is our sanctuary.
Anywhere you put it it's ours.
Our living voice,
our living testament.
We dream aloud,
we scream and shout.
Our courage will defeat them.
Our struggle will unite us.
Our wisdom is ourselves,
our resources our own,
our blood ocean,
our skin oil.

We are mountain and waterfall,
they cannot contain us.
Their prisons will not restrain us,
their customs will not un-name us.
We are what they know in their hearts,
you guessed it,
you knew that,
you felt it,
you tried to doubt it,
denied it,
but you knew it,
ain't nobody had to tell you.
We had them from the start.
A world apart, a world within,
ancient and luminous.
The before before and the hereafter.
We are the essence of laughter.
The comforting prayer
and the gatekeepers
and the street-sweepers.
A mountain of ports outside of a city of dreams.
A bird that prays, yet offers its wingspan to the wind.
Things are not as they seem.
We hover above while giving the appearance of scurrying below.
All is as it should be.
We are more than we know.
More than we hoped and dreamed,
a generation of generators,
a power source and supply.
The better we learn to live,
the better we learn to die.
Old as anything,
old as everything,
we are participants in a ritual
older than our collective memory,
a marriage of heart and mind,
secular and divine.

All is as it should be.
Slavery carefully bred us.
No child of Greece or Rome can behead us.
We are ahead of our time.
Slavery was simply a state of mind.
Hip hop reminded us of confidence.
Overcoming now is simply common sense.
You deserve the ice and the riches of Solomon.
But don't let warped values turn you into hollow men.
Education is the only thing given that cannot be taken.
Learn to think for yourself,
analyze the forsaken.
Pimp your fears,
surrender to love,
dance all night when you need to.
Play this song for a thug,
let 'em know ain't no judgment.
We all hustle and grind,
any system against us is against the divine.
But there's no sense of glory in repenting,
and repeating,
their mistakes.
You have a greater calling.
Answering it is all it takes.
Take a second to hear this
and go back about your day.
Know that laws don't govern us,
we're governed by what we say.
What we think, why we think it, how we handle.
Place no blame, point no fingers, take your aim.

Shoot to kill. The bullshit.

Saul Williams - Pedagogue of Young Gods (mp3)