Lowkey - 200 Bars of Power lyrics
[Lowkey - 200 Bars of Power lyrics]
200 bars, SBTV, exclusive, listen
Guess who's back from the land of the nomads
Land of the scallywags, land of the toerags
Land where they don't Snapchat
And they don't dab
We were fractured to fragments, it's so sad
Guess who's back from the land of the nomads
Land of the scallywags, land of the toerags
Land where they don't Snapchat
And they don't dab
We were fractured to fragments, it's so sad
We were captured as chapters in notepads
Where the have-lots robbed from
The don't haves
Where the caps lock's lost in the phone tap
Emojis minus emotion and vocab
Seven years passed
Let me parse you for part 2
Never let them tell you what you
Can or you can't do
They don't know where you stand
'cause they aren't you
Love yourself to the core
Even when it's hard to
Cry no more, shout and sing
Violence in silence the loudest thing
They don't know about the
Power the Shaolin brings
Place a rock for a mountain that outlives him
Like Malcolm did, we are out of sync
And out of time by the sound of things
Arms long like Dhalsim is how to win
Best murder machine gets crowned a king
But what about the voices
That can't be heard?
Press barons witch hunt like McCarthy purge
You're lying to yourself
The past seem's worse 'Cause I can get dark
More dark than the dark moor
I can get dark like a dark night in Dartmoor
Dark like Darfur at half past four
AM, so why you dummies getting daft for?
Not shy to defend it
Don't try to prevent this
A mind as tremendous as Einstein
Or Midas i meant this
I rise from the trenches like vikings
I'm fighting for my independence
My rhymes are relentless
Like a right to your dentures
Your rhymes are as violent as fencing
My rhymes are offensive
As violent as Ghengis through
Pride and resentment
Misers cry to lament this
How foul could your mouth be?
How could you doubt me?
That's random like a row with a mounty
Or an alchi' driving his Audi to Saudi
Or Bush and Blair making
Rap albums about peace
You're ready for the rumble
Heading for a tumble
Definitely better any veteran among you
They should've told you 'If anybody loves you
With level irrelevance
You will never get above two'
I murk it with ease, burn it indeed
Merge with the beat like the
Birds and the bees
They want food for thought
I will serve them a feast not commercial
Believe that I nurtured a niche
Much love to those doing reaction vids
Rap kids act big but are tactic less
Better off practising mad back-flips
With a bad slipped disc and fractured wrists
Who mastered this? Know what the answer is
Who's got bars that carve to
The heart of this?
Regardless, I blame SB for starting this
What's Fire in the Booth to an arsonist?
Guys don't make me rap
Guys don't make me rap
Guys don't make me rap, might go crazy at
What's Fire in the Booth to a pyromaniac?
Please bro, he don't need no heat though
What's Fire in the Booth to
The dragon Ricky Steamboat
Seven years out, never fear doubt
Any peers proud? Whatever the weather
Better clear out you're a mere mouse
I'm here now to tear down
What you care about bears clout
Can never compare now
Back worse than ever before
Rebel with a cause you could never ignore
If anyone thought
I never dead it with metaphors
That were better than yours
I rendered the sentiments simple with source
And dead on the floors let them have a bite
But that was bad advice if you fraternise
Know what man-a man are like
When a man on mic
Battles bad as Bannon's like
When hes banning guys
Had enough of savage lies getting sanitised
Asinine pantomimes got you paralysed
Got a panoramic mind when I strategise
Agonise, analyse before I spat a rhyme
Merciless mystic, birth as a misfit
Journalistic gift with the verbalist instinct
They heard that I did this
Cursed as an infant
But burst with the verse
Like the first in existence
Billionaires, they don't want Corbyn in
We nearly are there
Hit them with the four-kick spin
They're silly and scared
Running on a forfeit ting
Hearing impaired, thinking I'm a Nordic King
We fought the cowards of corporate towers
Tryna force them out the corridors of power
And the taste makers were sort of sour
Vultures circle, leave your corpse devour
But I'm back now
Power to those that read bell hooks
Power to those that sell books
Power to those who know how the
Inside of a cell looks
All those feeling helpless
Forgotten and discarded
Power to the strange fruit they thought
Was rotten in the garden
Power to those sitting alone
Seeking solace in the calmness
Power to those feeling stained
Know your tomorrow isn't tarnished
Power to those that sweep the streets
With more knowledge than PhD's
Power to those that keep their
Keys, return this promise, please believe
Power to those that suffer in silence
Those it hurts to hear
Power to those that hold their ground
Power to those that persevere
Power to those that love humanity
More than they love style
Power to immigrants probably raising
Donald Trump's child
Power to the blind who can't
Imagine what sight is
Power to those staring at the moon
And all those working night-shifts
Power to the readers, the writers
The illiterate power to those that struggle
To decolonise their syllabus
Power to the shy ones
Always struggle to make friends
And the half of humanity worth
Less than eight men
Power to those that risked their life to
Dig the coltan from the ground
For the mic I'm spitting on and
The phone you're holding now
Power to those that build the
Stadium they're playing in
Power to those that mowed the grass and
Stitched the ball that they're playing in
Power to every rapper that
Doesn't rap about killing
Power to the builders who built
Buildings that outlived them
Power to the slaves of Ancient Greece that
Didn't have the right to vote
Democracy dead like Gary Webb
When they import it like it's coke
Power to those write to prison
Power to those writing home
Power to those writing poems
Power to those that died alone
Power to Curtis Mayfield
Power to Ronald Isely
Power to the fishermen that
Were forced into piracy
Power to every person that is
Working in a library
Power to every nurse that we turn
To in our times of need
Power to the unions and
The mindless Thatcher punished
Power to those that drive the busses
And those that collect the rubbish
Power to the youth desiring the truth
Power to every rapper that is dying
For a Fire in the Booth
For those that lost limbs
To King Leopald's quota
And those risking their lives for
The P&O to Dover
Power to victims of this
Globalised cosa nostra
Power to those dying on the
Shores and the borders
Power to humanbeings that were
Rendered fauna and flora
Power to those that cleaned up
After the stage show
And Carnival goers still haunted
By Kelso Cochrane's ghost
Power to his picture taunts us ever after
So many questions never answered
Remember the last words
Of Abdul-Muhsin Al-Saadoun
"الأمة تنتظر الخدمة، الإنجليز لا يوافقون"
Power to Al-Jawahiri and his rebellions
They killed his brother Ja'far and
He cursed the rotten Thamesians
Enlighten despots pursuing
Tactics Machiavellian
Chinese still preceded Europa millennium
Think about it
Printed press half a millennium
Never get close power to Ken Loach and
Every volunteer in Lesbos
Cuban doctors sent to Sri
Lanka for the tsunami
Power to those that cleaned up
After the Bullingdon parties
Kids knowing Apple products before they
Know what an apple is
Forgotten like passengers on
The USS Indianapolis dying days
For they could see what
Little boy's damage did
On the precipice of fascism
Our passiveness is cancerous
Power to those still strong enough to dream
Power to those that chose not to
Be a cog in the machine
Power to those that love first and hate never
Power to those that sleep on
The streets through grey weather
Power to Aziz Ali and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony
Power to Norman Baker, David Kelly's
Ulnar artery
Power to the genocided population of Tasmania
The internet descends to Trumptastic fantasia
Let them try quote this
You'll never find a better
Diagnosis than collective psychosis
It's getting quite hopeless but hope
Is all we have tryna cultivate the positive
Not focus on the bad
But the globe's under attack
The obnoxious rage of a fake intellectual
Amazing grace in the age of the spectacle
Not the first time they
Found a racist electable
To raise to the pedestal
Then desecrate the place that
Translated the decimal
I don't wanna tempt fate
Power to corpse-washers like Salvador Allende
Power to language learners
From Bernie Sanders fans to flag-burners
One man's inertia is another man's purpose
In the utopia of song, we are victorious
But the bitter sweet reality
Is not this glorious
Power to Coltrane watching Malcolm X
Power to Paul Robeson under house-arrest
Power to Galileo under house-arrest
Power to Ibn Haytham under house-arrest
Forgive me if I sound obsessed
Forgive me if I sound depressed
Believe me, that's not how it's meant
They probably think I couldn't come
Back and kill the alphabet
Al-Khwarizmi estimated the circumference
Of the globe at a time when Europe thought
The earth was flat
And couldn't tell the time of day
The astrolabe paved the way
For the clock now I'm about to turn it back
Was the qanoon of Ibn
Sina perceived as backwards
When Oxford scholars deemed bathing
A heathen practice
History from Aristotle to Al-Kindi
As we gather
Innovations of Ibn Haytham to da
Vinci and the camera
Ask Roger Bacon, Galileo and Adelard of Bath
Ibn Shatir before Copernicus
Century and a half
House of wisdom, books waiting gold
Answers to conundrum's chain
Cheng Ho sailed the sea before
Da Gama and Columbus
You are not who they say you are
You're blessed with a choice
Here since the 700's
Look at King Offa’s coins
You can do whatever it is that you wanna do
There's a crater named after
Al-Ma'mun on the moon
Civilisations build on each other
Not each to their own
My question: If people are equal like
The teeth of a comb
Were Jahiz, Mansa Musa, Malik Najashi Abeed
I didn't think so but it seems Shaabi
Nasi what I need check yourself
Check Raphael's depiction of Ibn Rushd
Think twice, study history
Give it a different look
Curriculum's literally littered with
Pitfalls of ridicule
Fatima al-Fihri founded one of
The oldest still-existing schools
It's deeper than some rhymes I'm
Providing for the listener
No surprise for a spitter
The word cypher came from ṣifr
Is the next Younis Mahmoud among
Four million orphaned babies?
What if Yusra Mardini wasn't able
To swim to safety? It could be Steve Jobs
Is starving under hisar
It would be Zaha Hadid just
Died in an infijar
Through your blood flows Gilgamesh
And Abu Nuwas
Your future's bigger than the pain or
Your present and your past
We strive to be free
Fanon struggled for independence he
Wasn't alive to see
The countrification, alienation
Souls left so scarred
Idarat altawahish decapitations on postcards
The occupier left behind all forms of stigma
Insidious settlement of the mind
Is more malignant
From the ashes of war, no phoenix
That human is lost
They learnt idarat altawahish from
Ensuing the cost
They learnt resistance from Morheeba Korshid
And Lela Khaled learnt about
Jamal from Bu Azza, abu Basha and Bouhired
If Abdelkader was reburied in
Al-Jaza'er that's the
Proof return will come for the
Diaspora of the nakba
Not the first or the last to
Break free from the gillotine
Yesterday Aljazair, tomorrow Philistine
Not the first or the last to
Break free from the gillotine
Yesterday Aljazair, tomorrow Philistine
My love letter to the past
This is my love letter to the future
This is my love letter from the heart
'cause you don't know how beautiful you are
My love letter to the past
This is my love letter to the future
This is my love letter from the heart
'cause you don't know how beautiful you are
Guess who's back from the land of the nomads
Land of the scallywags, land of the toerags
Land where they don't Snapchat
And they don't dab
We were fractured to fragments, it's so sad
Guess who's back from the land of the nomads
Land of the scallywags, land of the toerags
Land where they don't Snapchat
And they don't dab
We were fractured to fragments, it's so sad
We were captured as chapters in notepads
Where the have-lots robbed from
The don't haves
Where the caps lock's lost in the phone tap
Emojis minus emotion and vocab
Seven years passed
Let me parse you for part 2
Never let them tell you what you
Can or you can't do
They don't know where you stand
'cause they aren't you
Love yourself to the core
Even when it's hard to
Cry no more, shout and sing
Violence in silence the loudest thing
They don't know about the
Power the Shaolin brings
Place a rock for a mountain that outlives him
Like Malcolm did, we are out of sync
And out of time by the sound of things
Arms long like Dhalsim is how to win
Best murder machine gets crowned a king
But what about the voices
That can't be heard?
Press barons witch hunt like McCarthy purge
You're lying to yourself
The past seem's worse 'Cause I can get dark
More dark than the dark moor
I can get dark like a dark night in Dartmoor
Dark like Darfur at half past four
AM, so why you dummies getting daft for?
Not shy to defend it
Don't try to prevent this
A mind as tremendous as Einstein
Or Midas i meant this
I rise from the trenches like vikings
I'm fighting for my independence
My rhymes are relentless
Like a right to your dentures
Your rhymes are as violent as fencing
My rhymes are offensive
As violent as Ghengis through
Pride and resentment
Misers cry to lament this
How foul could your mouth be?
How could you doubt me?
That's random like a row with a mounty
Or an alchi' driving his Audi to Saudi
Or Bush and Blair making
Rap albums about peace
You're ready for the rumble
Heading for a tumble
Definitely better any veteran among you
They should've told you 'If anybody loves you
With level irrelevance
You will never get above two'
I murk it with ease, burn it indeed
Merge with the beat like the
Birds and the bees
They want food for thought
I will serve them a feast not commercial
Believe that I nurtured a niche
Much love to those doing reaction vids
Rap kids act big but are tactic less
Better off practising mad back-flips
With a bad slipped disc and fractured wrists
Who mastered this? Know what the answer is
Who's got bars that carve to
The heart of this?
Regardless, I blame SB for starting this
What's Fire in the Booth to an arsonist?
Guys don't make me rap
Guys don't make me rap
Guys don't make me rap, might go crazy at
What's Fire in the Booth to a pyromaniac?
Please bro, he don't need no heat though
What's Fire in the Booth to
The dragon Ricky Steamboat
Seven years out, never fear doubt
Any peers proud? Whatever the weather
Better clear out you're a mere mouse
I'm here now to tear down
What you care about bears clout
Can never compare now
Back worse than ever before
Rebel with a cause you could never ignore
If anyone thought
I never dead it with metaphors
That were better than yours
I rendered the sentiments simple with source
And dead on the floors let them have a bite
But that was bad advice if you fraternise
Know what man-a man are like
When a man on mic
Battles bad as Bannon's like
When hes banning guys
Had enough of savage lies getting sanitised
Asinine pantomimes got you paralysed
Got a panoramic mind when I strategise
Agonise, analyse before I spat a rhyme
Merciless mystic, birth as a misfit
Journalistic gift with the verbalist instinct
They heard that I did this
Cursed as an infant
But burst with the verse
Like the first in existence
Billionaires, they don't want Corbyn in
We nearly are there
Hit them with the four-kick spin
They're silly and scared
Running on a forfeit ting
Hearing impaired, thinking I'm a Nordic King
We fought the cowards of corporate towers
Tryna force them out the corridors of power
And the taste makers were sort of sour
Vultures circle, leave your corpse devour
But I'm back now
Power to those that read bell hooks
Power to those that sell books
Power to those who know how the
Inside of a cell looks
All those feeling helpless
Forgotten and discarded
Power to the strange fruit they thought
Was rotten in the garden
Power to those sitting alone
Seeking solace in the calmness
Power to those feeling stained
Know your tomorrow isn't tarnished
Power to those that sweep the streets
With more knowledge than PhD's
Power to those that keep their
Keys, return this promise, please believe
Power to those that suffer in silence
Those it hurts to hear
Power to those that hold their ground
Power to those that persevere
Power to those that love humanity
More than they love style
Power to immigrants probably raising
Donald Trump's child
Power to the blind who can't
Imagine what sight is
Power to those staring at the moon
And all those working night-shifts
Power to the readers, the writers
The illiterate power to those that struggle
To decolonise their syllabus
Power to the shy ones
Always struggle to make friends
And the half of humanity worth
Less than eight men
Power to those that risked their life to
Dig the coltan from the ground
For the mic I'm spitting on and
The phone you're holding now
Power to those that build the
Stadium they're playing in
Power to those that mowed the grass and
Stitched the ball that they're playing in
Power to every rapper that
Doesn't rap about killing
Power to the builders who built
Buildings that outlived them
Power to the slaves of Ancient Greece that
Didn't have the right to vote
Democracy dead like Gary Webb
When they import it like it's coke
Power to those write to prison
Power to those writing home
Power to those writing poems
Power to those that died alone
Power to Curtis Mayfield
Power to Ronald Isely
Power to the fishermen that
Were forced into piracy
Power to every person that is
Working in a library
Power to every nurse that we turn
To in our times of need
Power to the unions and
The mindless Thatcher punished
Power to those that drive the busses
And those that collect the rubbish
Power to the youth desiring the truth
Power to every rapper that is dying
For a Fire in the Booth
For those that lost limbs
To King Leopald's quota
And those risking their lives for
The P&O to Dover
Power to victims of this
Globalised cosa nostra
Power to those dying on the
Shores and the borders
Power to humanbeings that were
Rendered fauna and flora
Power to those that cleaned up
After the stage show
And Carnival goers still haunted
By Kelso Cochrane's ghost
Power to his picture taunts us ever after
So many questions never answered
Remember the last words
Of Abdul-Muhsin Al-Saadoun
"الأمة تنتظر الخدمة، الإنجليز لا يوافقون"
Power to Al-Jawahiri and his rebellions
They killed his brother Ja'far and
He cursed the rotten Thamesians
Enlighten despots pursuing
Tactics Machiavellian
Chinese still preceded Europa millennium
Think about it
Printed press half a millennium
Never get close power to Ken Loach and
Every volunteer in Lesbos
Cuban doctors sent to Sri
Lanka for the tsunami
Power to those that cleaned up
After the Bullingdon parties
Kids knowing Apple products before they
Know what an apple is
Forgotten like passengers on
The USS Indianapolis dying days
For they could see what
Little boy's damage did
On the precipice of fascism
Our passiveness is cancerous
Power to those still strong enough to dream
Power to those that chose not to
Be a cog in the machine
Power to those that love first and hate never
Power to those that sleep on
The streets through grey weather
Power to Aziz Ali and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony
Power to Norman Baker, David Kelly's
Ulnar artery
Power to the genocided population of Tasmania
The internet descends to Trumptastic fantasia
Let them try quote this
You'll never find a better
Diagnosis than collective psychosis
It's getting quite hopeless but hope
Is all we have tryna cultivate the positive
Not focus on the bad
But the globe's under attack
The obnoxious rage of a fake intellectual
Amazing grace in the age of the spectacle
Not the first time they
Found a racist electable
To raise to the pedestal
Then desecrate the place that
Translated the decimal
I don't wanna tempt fate
Power to corpse-washers like Salvador Allende
Power to language learners
From Bernie Sanders fans to flag-burners
One man's inertia is another man's purpose
In the utopia of song, we are victorious
But the bitter sweet reality
Is not this glorious
Power to Coltrane watching Malcolm X
Power to Paul Robeson under house-arrest
Power to Galileo under house-arrest
Power to Ibn Haytham under house-arrest
Forgive me if I sound obsessed
Forgive me if I sound depressed
Believe me, that's not how it's meant
They probably think I couldn't come
Back and kill the alphabet
Al-Khwarizmi estimated the circumference
Of the globe at a time when Europe thought
The earth was flat
And couldn't tell the time of day
The astrolabe paved the way
For the clock now I'm about to turn it back
Was the qanoon of Ibn
Sina perceived as backwards
When Oxford scholars deemed bathing
A heathen practice
History from Aristotle to Al-Kindi
As we gather
Innovations of Ibn Haytham to da
Vinci and the camera
Ask Roger Bacon, Galileo and Adelard of Bath
Ibn Shatir before Copernicus
Century and a half
House of wisdom, books waiting gold
Answers to conundrum's chain
Cheng Ho sailed the sea before
Da Gama and Columbus
You are not who they say you are
You're blessed with a choice
Here since the 700's
Look at King Offa’s coins
You can do whatever it is that you wanna do
There's a crater named after
Al-Ma'mun on the moon
Civilisations build on each other
Not each to their own
My question: If people are equal like
The teeth of a comb
Were Jahiz, Mansa Musa, Malik Najashi Abeed
I didn't think so but it seems Shaabi
Nasi what I need check yourself
Check Raphael's depiction of Ibn Rushd
Think twice, study history
Give it a different look
Curriculum's literally littered with
Pitfalls of ridicule
Fatima al-Fihri founded one of
The oldest still-existing schools
It's deeper than some rhymes I'm
Providing for the listener
No surprise for a spitter
The word cypher came from ṣifr
Is the next Younis Mahmoud among
Four million orphaned babies?
What if Yusra Mardini wasn't able
To swim to safety? It could be Steve Jobs
Is starving under hisar
It would be Zaha Hadid just
Died in an infijar
Through your blood flows Gilgamesh
And Abu Nuwas
Your future's bigger than the pain or
Your present and your past
We strive to be free
Fanon struggled for independence he
Wasn't alive to see
The countrification, alienation
Souls left so scarred
Idarat altawahish decapitations on postcards
The occupier left behind all forms of stigma
Insidious settlement of the mind
Is more malignant
From the ashes of war, no phoenix
That human is lost
They learnt idarat altawahish from
Ensuing the cost
They learnt resistance from Morheeba Korshid
And Lela Khaled learnt about
Jamal from Bu Azza, abu Basha and Bouhired
If Abdelkader was reburied in
Al-Jaza'er that's the
Proof return will come for the
Diaspora of the nakba
Not the first or the last to
Break free from the gillotine
Yesterday Aljazair, tomorrow Philistine
Not the first or the last to
Break free from the gillotine
Yesterday Aljazair, tomorrow Philistine
My love letter to the past
This is my love letter to the future
This is my love letter from the heart
'cause you don't know how beautiful you are
My love letter to the past
This is my love letter to the future
This is my love letter from the heart
'cause you don't know how beautiful you are