Uh-uh-uh, what up?
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Uh, I'm tryna, what up?
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Uh-uh, I'm tryna get something
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Uh-uh-uh, I'm tryna, what up?
|
I say, what up?
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Uh-uh, I'm tryna
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Sometimes I wanna leave, sometimes I wanna cry
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Sometimes I hate to bear the truth, sometimes I wanna lie
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Sometimes I wanna school the youth, sometimes I wanna ride
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Sometimes I wanna not think, sometimes I wanna vibe
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Sometimes I wanna bump Tribe and zone out, this song bout a young boy
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that's going wild inside, when my world collide
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with your world where your girl and your kids reside
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We kill the facades, we feel free to fly
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We're birds that reserve in the charismatic sky
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I care about my pride too much, if my clothes is new
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if my ride is plush, if my hair is cut, if my diamonds is crushed
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I look in the mirror, I'm trendy enough? Wrong
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Insecurity roams the black community
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Homes where kids must have jewelry
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The high school female need earrings and details
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so she can be cool to be amongst popularity
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The various name brands that reach the price scan
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that's not about the right price, but more like the right scam
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to rule us all, confuse us all
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Hit the bank within five minutes and then withdraw
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Now let's draw the picture of a rapper with a chain
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in a Range that is not paid for
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My cousin from the South said he just bought him a house
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that lives around his neck like a white collar
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So why fast forward? Then I rewind
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A time machine can help me double back to slavery times
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Picking cotton from a field that a white man own
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The blacker you are, farther you from the white man's home
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Negro spiritual zones gave us some type of sanity
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Before your vanity they parted our families
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They put us in hundred-degree shade, and outside we bathed
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The more we were afraid, the more they made rules
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and trapped our minds in the cage, our freedom was so fake
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Couldn't see it with the eyes of Tracee Ross, uh!
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And school was exempt, see we couldn't have smarts
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and a smirk could get you hurt, wound diversed from a scar
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Four-hundred years of nothing, four-hundred years of suffering
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Four-hundred years of tears and tribulation, miseducation
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See what we facing is now coming, back to the roots
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Remember whips on our back and if we would run they would shoot?
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Call us niggers and figured that we'd never lived in pursuit
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of happiness, we captured these feelings in things that we do
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Thought it's abstinence in slavery, but we made it come to
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a modern perspective, my shoe selection gotta be Louie
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Her handbag gotta be Gucci, it's fake then she foobie
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She still bad though, and her fake Gucci ain't that bad though
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We filling up the gas for Rollies
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Upgrade to twenty-sixes, out there riding Kobes
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My cousin from the South, slavery start in the South and I bet ya
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he overcompensates for the life of his ancestors
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So blame it on the four-hundred years we never saw
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The reason why the next four-hundred we gotta floss
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Slaves
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Uh, I say the four-hundred years we never had nothing
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Barely had clothes on our back
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It's the reason why when we get a little bit of change
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we over-exaggerate on our living expenses
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So if you get your first big check and you cop a chain before you buy a house
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You're a vanity slave
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If you're a female and you got four, five, six rings on your finger
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four holes in your left ear and a nose piercing
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You're a vanity slave
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If you got an '02 Monte Carlo with twenty-fo's on it
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and on the back of the window it says "get on my level hoe"
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You're a vanity slave
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We all vanity slaves
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and with that being said, can somebody please tell me where the mall at?
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I'm not from around here
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Hey Ali, where we at? Idaho?
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Yeah nigga, you know the first of the month
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You know them checks come in
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I'm tryna get something, but what up?
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Vanity Slaves
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| Kendrick Lamar |
