The message (or: Labour’s legacy)

14 09 2010

Broken glass everywhere
People pissin’ on the stairs, you know they just don’t care
I can’t take the smell, can’t take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away but I couldn’t get far
‘cuz a man with a tow truck repossessed my car

The bill collectors, they ring my phone
and scare my wife when I’m not home
Got a bum education, double-digit inflation
Can’t take the train to the job, there’s a strike at the station

A child is born with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smilin’ on you but he’s frownin’ too
Because only God knows what you’ll go through
You’ll grow in the ghetto livin’ second-rate
And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate
The places you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alleyway
You’ll admire all the number-book takers
Thugs, pimps and pushers and the big money-makers
Drivin’ big cars, spendin’ twenties and tens
And you’ll wanna grow up to be just like them, huh
Smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers
Pickpockets, peddlers, even panhandlers
You say I’m cool, huh, I’m no fool
But then you wind up droppin’ outta high school
Now you’re unemployed, all null and void
Walkin’ round like you’re Pretty Boy Floyd
Turned stick-up kid, but look what you done did
Got sent up for a eight-year bid
Now your manhood is took and you’re a Maytag
Spend the next two years as a undercover fag
Bein’ used and abused to serve like hell
’til one day, you was found hung dead in the cell
It was plain to see that your life was lost
You was cold and your body swung back and forth
But now your eyes sing the sad, sad song
Of how you lived so fast and died so young so…

Don’t push me ‘cuz I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to lose my head


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5 responses

14 09 2010
Area Trace No Search

Apparently it’s like a jungle aometimes

14 09 2010
Blue Eyes

Yup, aometimes I wonder how I keep from going under.

15 09 2010
Radders

I assume it’s ‘rap’ of some variety, but strangely articulate and packed with cultural references that would be alien to your average ghetto hood. Internal evidence suggests it was penned by someone with a ‘college education’ in US terms and geared at achieving music sales amongst the alienated underclass.

Am I right?

15 09 2010
Blue Eyes

Spot on, but I’m surprised you haven’t come across it before – it’s about thirty years old.

15 09 2010
JuliaM

I still prefer Presley’s ‘In The Ghetto’…

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