Akala, Lowkey - Behind My Painted Smile lyrics

Behind my painted smile when
All the revolutionary noise
Is nothing but a lost little boy
Confused and insecure, arrogant and oversure
An egotistical prick so come on
Please praise me more
It's great that my music bettered
You but I contemplate murder
Every day so don't put me on a pedestal
Plus truly, just the vehicle the music
Just runs through me
In my better moments I could
Let the universe use me

Behind my smile there's generations
Of pain, self hatred
Ingrained miseducated my brain
Decimated the place where my
Dead relations were slain
Not just physically but mentally
Penetrated our veins
What you got inside hasn't gotta die once
It can die a lot of times
That I promise my son
Analyse every song that I've done - tryna
Fight colonialism with a colonised tongue

Here I stand again living in sin
Caught up, in the dream
Behind the painted smile

Behind my painted smile is
The most painful grimace
This mental prison I live in
Cause I am so conditioned
By my privilege, what a strange contradiction
To grow up brown in Britain
And know that your living was paid for by a
Carcass that resembles yours
Born in the heart of the empire
You're worth more than others just like you
But less then the native ones
Raised by my mum but in this
World I am a father's son

Behind my painted smile
A very flawed human being
Done many things that I regret
And never knew the reason
What do you believe in
Truth or freedom or are you deceiving?
I don't wanna die in
Prostration to European's
They say the answer is within
You and nowhere else
Understand the vision man on a
Mission to know himself
This is for my co-defendants no
Retreat and no surrender
You probably think that we
Don't remember Ota Benga


The smile is painted on my face
Is tainted by a frown
Picture in the pocket's of blood
That decorate the town
Trigger jum bullets sung and guns hum
Then everyone that's dead
Was somebody's someone

Behind my painted smile I feel
Like a naked child
Maybe rapping ain't for now cos
My passion is fading out
Up early though I search and
Roam along this dirty road
Just another traveller taking a
Long journey home

All this talk of intervention to protect
On what is the intention
Same as it ever was the
Colonial past and present
And more respect for most
Of the right wingers
Than the paternalistic patronising
Liberal bigot

Our way of life is so divine
We should intervene
Select war and export the British dream
Behind cinema screens there's much
That isn't seen
George Clooney war movies never
Bring our children peace

Yo fam, you ever wake up and
Just feel like fucking off
And never coming back to this
Place and just cutting off?

All the time
Almost did last year the trouble
Was the bloody cops
Had me running in and out the bloody dock

I been there brother, though I don't
Promote it in this rap shit
I ain't a stranger to having my
Back on their blue plastic

Can't keep us captive

We see the tactics

To keep us passive

We beat the fascists

Release the classics

And reach the masses!