vanity slaves

uh-uh-uh

what up?

uh

i'm tryna

what up?

uh-uh

i'm tryna get something

uh-uh-uh

i'm tryna

what up?

i say

what up?

uh-uh

i'm tryna

sometimes i wanna leave

sometimes i wanna cry

sometimes i hate to bear the truth

sometimes i wanna lie

sometimes i wanna school the youth

sometimes i wanna ride

sometimes i wanna not think

sometimes i wanna vibe

sometimes i wanna bump tribe and zone out

this song bout a young boy

that's going wild inside

when my world collide

with your world where your girl and your kids reside

we kill the facades

we feel free to fly

we're birds that reserve in the charismatic sky

i care about my pride too much

if my clothes is new

if my ride is plush

if my hair is cut

if my diamonds is crushed

i look in the mirror

i'm trendy enough? wrong

insecurity roams the black community

homes where kids must have jewelry

the high school female need earrings and details

so she can be cool to be amongst popularity

the various name brands that reach the price scan

that's not about the right price

but more like the right scam

to rule us all

confuse us all

hit the bank within five minutes and then withdraw

now let's draw the picture of a rapper with a chain

in a range that is not paid for

my cousin from the south said he just bought him a house

that lives around his neck like a white collar

so why fast forward? then i rewind

a time machine can help me double back to slavery times

picking cotton from a field that a white man own

the blacker you are

farther you from the white man's home

negro spiritual zones gave us some type of sanity

before your vanity they parted our families

they put us in hundred-degree shade

and outside we bathed

the more we were afraid

the more they made rules

and trapped our minds in the cage

our freedom was so fake

couldn't see it with the eyes of tracee ross

uh!

and school was exempt

see we couldn't have smarts

and a smirk could get you hurt

wound diversed from a scar

four-hundred years of nothing

four-hundred years of suffering

four-hundred years of tears and tribulation

miseducation

see what we facing is now coming

back to the roots

remember whips on our back and if we would run they would shoot?

call us niggers and figured that we'd never lived in pursuit

of happiness

we captured these feelings in things that we do

thought it's abstinence in slavery

but we made it come to

a modern perspective

my shoe selection gotta be louie

her handbag gotta be gucci

it's fake then she foobie

she still bad though

and her fake gucci ain't that bad though

we filling up the gas for rollies

upgrade to twenty-sixes

out there riding kobes

my cousin from the south

slavery start in the south and i bet ya

he overcompensates for the life of his ancestors

so blame it on the four-hundred years we never saw

the reason why the next four-hundred we gotta floss

slaves

uh

i say the four-hundred years we never had nothing

barely had clothes on our back

it's the reason why when we get a little bit of change

we over-exaggerate on our living expenses

so if you get your first big check and you cop a chain before you buy a house

you're a vanity slave

if you're a female and you got four

five

six rings on your finger

four holes in your left ear and a nose piercing

you're a vanity slave

if you got an '02 monte carlo with twenty-fo's on it

and on the back of the window it says get on my level hoe"