KRS-One - Boogie Down Productions's You Must Learn" lyrics

Just like I told you, you must learn

It's calm yet wild the style that I speak
Just filled with facts and you will
Never get weak in the heart
In fact you'll start to illuminate
Knowledge to others in a song
Let me demonstrate the force of knowledge
Knowledge reigned supreme
The ignorant is ripped to smithereens
What do you mean when you say I'm rebellious
Cause I don't accept everything
That you're telling us
What are you selling us
The creator dwellin' us
I sit in your unknown class
While you're failing' us
I failed your class cause I
Ain't with your reasoning
You're tryin' make me you by seasoning
Up my mind with see Jane run


See John walk in a hardcore New York
Come on now, that's like a chocolate cow
It doesn't exist no way, no how
It seems to me that in a school that's ebony
African history should be pumped up steadily
But it's not
And this has got to stop, See Spot run
Run get Spot insulting to a Black mentality
A Black way of life
Or a jet Black family, so
I include with one concern, that
You must learn

I believe that if you're teaching history
Filled with straight up facts no mystery
Teach the student what needs to be taught
Cause Black and White kids both take shorts
When one doesn't know about
The other ones' culture
Ignorance swoops down like a vulture
Cause you don't know that you
Ain't just a janitor
No one told you about Benjamin Banneker
A brilliant Black man that
Invented the almanac
Can't you see where KRS is coming at
With Eli Whitney, Haile Selassie
Granville Woods made the walkie talkie
Lewis Latimer improved on Edison
Charles Drew did a lot for medicine
Garrett Morgan made the traffic lights
Harriet Tubman freed the slaves at night
Madam CJ walker made the straightening comb
But you won't know this is you weren't shown
The point I'm gettin' at it it might be harsh
Cause we're just walkin' around brainwashed
So what I'm sayin' is not to diss a man
We need the 89 school system
One that caters to a Black return because
You must learn

"Alkebulan" is the original name
Of Africa, now stripped of it's fame
It's good to know that in ancient times
Egyptians developed all sciences of the mind
To the point where they ruled the planet
But Rome, Greece, and Persia wasn't havin' it
They attacked, and won the war
But it wasn't enough
They had to get to the core
Cause in that time it was Alkebulan
That ruled religion, politics, and man
In order to destroy the Egyptian race
They had to wipe the sciences from
Off the face of the planet
So they proceeded to ban it
Then replace it with Christianity
And it's, been that way, all the way to today
Learn what we teach hear what we say
But here comes
The K-the-R-the-S-the-O-the-N-the-E
The BDP and we rhyme intelligently
Let me continue with Theodosyius
A Greek ruler not known to most of us
He, in the fourth century AD
Calls the Egyptians fools you see
Two years later, Justinian rules
Six AD, was it for schools
As a result, ignorance had swirled
Over Christian Europe and Greco-Roman worlds
This went on for a thousand years
Of ignorance, stupidity, and tears
Now comes the seventeenth century hardness
Europe, began to come out of it's darkness
So Johann F blumenbach, a German
Came out of nowhere and started confirming
White supremacy and men of colors
Before this time, all men were brothers
It was Johann, who went on to say
There are five different colors
In the world today
That's caucasian, malayan, and mongolian
American-Indian, and ethiopian
Yet, the ignorance gets scarier
He believed whites were superior
According to his idiotic fountain
The purest whites were from
The Caucas mountains
J a blofener, and H s chamberlain
Both supported this outrageous racism
This went on to what the
Master race should be
And why they killed the Jews in Germany
Here is the reason why I'm so concerned
Because you, must, learn!