Lyrics

Tonight
(Gill Sotu)

Tonight, I don’t want to talk about being black in America
You’ve heard that already from other poets than me
Tonight, I want to talk about being human
Laughing so hard you pee, human
Crying so much you choke, human
Loving so deep that snot runs down your nose but you say, f**k it, I don’t care about her, human
So EGO driven that I take my poetry and let you judge it, human
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone
Let he with the most sin glorify it and put it behind a beat
Let the congregation put its hand’s in the air
wave it around like we just don’t care
Consume anything they tell us to cause we just don’t care
Turn on the T.V. soak in the advertising, believe anything they want us to believe, cause we just..don’t..care

So tonight, I don’t want to speak being black in America or about what’s wrong with hip-hop
Trust me, turn on BET or MTV and you’ll get the gist
Tonight, I want to talk about music, real music, music that flutters in your chest like a metallic butterfly so that you physically feel its beauty
Real music will never be hot…(I repeat) real music will never be hot, Jay-Z, Ludacris, Snoop Dog will drop something like its hot, but real music is DEEP
Like eating Taco Bell on a road trip with no bathroom breaks deep
Like Barry White beatboxing underwater deep
Deep like the thought that this country is so mixed up that black folks are becoming republicans and white folks are the only ones doing African drum circles…deep
Deep like Stevie Wonder lyrics..no deeper, deep like the fact that you know Stevie Wonder lyrics and he hasn’t put out a hit song in 20 years..deep
And I won’t talk about the girls dancing half naked in videos
From the dust we are born and to the dust we shall return
Tonight, I want to about women, women who used to be girls, girls with dreams, dreams bigger than the hand that magically holds planes in the air, some girls wish to be pilots, others are happy on 420 just getting high
Regardless, most girls are given baby’s to play with
While boys are given a careers
Fire engines, cop cars, chemistry sets
Girls get dolls that wet themselves and easy baker ovens to clean…
To me that sounds like damn chores
Now im not questioning anyone’s parenting skills, im just sayin’…
Why are most career driven females looked at as gay first in this society
& why are we really surprised when our babies are having babies, they have been in training since they’ve been in trainers

And I’m really not here to talk about the government
If you don’t know by now that they got their hands in the pockets of everything, I can’t help you
Tonight I wanna talk about Carlos
Carlos who promotes for the library like no name bands promote for their shows
Carlos, who doesn’t even work for the library, that’s just his way to start the revolution
I join his army. We fight the good fight
Our minds are our weapons; we load them with magazines,
books, anything to fire off thought
I tell dem young boys, don’t let Carlos die alone in this war, support the troops, pick up a yellow ribbon, use it as a bookmark in a yellow book, have it be about yellow history, brown history, black and red histories
So far in school we have only been given one perspective
You are much stronger then what they are shaping you to be

Most of all, I don’t want to talk about me,
let’s talk about you…you village of many,
hunter-gathers of thought,
I don’t think you realize how much I adore your fingertips..
When you them together they feed us,
When you them together they feed us
When you them together they feed us
Us poets dine from your fingertips, and get drunk from your compliments
So you must forgive us, whenever our poetry gets fat and lazy
It’s all just part of being human
Tonight, break out of the boundaries they use to bind you,
Go out, and be beautifully human