Nate Nics, Karim - Streetlight Symphonies lyrics

Darkest days, brightest nights
Cries for help, sho’ you right
We been tired all our lives
Living, losing under lights

Yeah, Let me take you back to summertime
2015 where any other time I woulda
Found a reason to be
But hopelessness was like the theme
A reoccurring motif
Or was my energy the imagery I needed to see
I left the house a couple times a week
Nothing was exciting
So I tried to get 12 hours sleep
A day to pass the time and
Started vibin' with my writing more
Saw the fam like once week windows open
Shots galore and screams echoing
Down the street
College 'round the corner but in fact
Around my corner wasn't safe
If it wasn't shells or casings it
Was blades where kids would play
And hat was life, we heard sirens aplenty
Violence and envy
Streets and caskets full of bodies
And our hearts'll be empty it goes (it goes)

Darkest days, brightest nights
Cries for help, sho’ you right
We been tired all our lives
Living lucid under the lights
Darkest days, brightest nights
Cries for help, sho’ you right
We been tired all our lives
Living lucid under the lights

Yeah, and in the fall
My first semester impressive and
Still it left a sour taste of the future in
Mouths of my first oppressor
17, but my mental was heavy
I felt them days getting blurry
And saw my consciousness ending
Didn't sleep to get them grades i
Didn't need and wouldn't keep
Yeah, my mom was proud of me
But for myself I sought reprieves
From the paler among us
I felt the glares and the hunger
Like they missed being gathered around
The branches they hung us
They turned around and saw an
Inconvenience being 'round us
I turned around and saw the
Tortures being mentally stuck
Between the silence of sacrificing
My voice so i could blend in with them
And the sirens and screams colliding once
I'm home in the end it goes (it goes)

Darkest days, brightest nights
Cries for help, sho’ you right
We been tired all our lives
Living lucid under the lights
Darkest days, brightest nights
Cries for help, sho’ you right
We been tired all our lives
Living lucid under the lights

We wear the mask that grins and lies
Hides our teeth and leaves us blind
Till our last it's crooked smiles
While tortured, bleeding hearts compile
We wear the mask that grins and lies
Hides our teeth and leaves us blind
Till our last it's crooked smiles
While broken, bleeding hearts compile
We wear the mask that grins and lies
Hides our teeth and leaves us blind
Till our last it's crooked smiles
While tortured, bleeding hearts compile

… wondering is my eye make-up on straight
Or a withdrawn discoursing on the
Stars and the moon
Instead of a for real Black
Person who must now feel and inflict
Pain

I wish I had a million dollars to my name
And if I did I'd prolly spend it
On a jacket, couple caskets
And a plane… yeah
So I could flee from all the trauma
And the problems that I probably can't escape
See, I made a promise to our father
Not to loathe a heart until I passed away
But today could be that day, so I pray

For this cycle of violence and
Wicked riots to find it's
Way to end in some silence
Before them sirens divide us
Indecisive over brotherhood
Our brother's hood is gone
Ain't no hooded justice coming
Ain't no trusting in the the law
Ain't no fighting for reform
We just fight and serve as pawns
I seen 'em running, bright as summer
With the leash up on their dogs
In our city where the better bet’s
To trade 'em ‘fore they gone we been pushed
Shoved and transferred just so they
Could mow their lawn
Still we murder one another just to
Say it on a song
It’s just revenge and hatred spewing through
Our veins it flows along
Might be wrong, but disaster's all we saw
That’s all we're taught
And there ain't no loving in the streets
The hood won't love us till we on
The white man pass the policies
The black man always take the fall
And the boys crackdown till we're deceased
Apparently six feet's where we belong
And the kids tote straps and hate police
Police tote straps and hate us all
With the violence all of us have seen
Eventually no peace left in the heart
See it’s racial violence and guns providing
Streetlight symphonies, loss, and silence
So keep your mouth shut and hope to God it's
Not you next at that candle lighting
Or standing by at wrong place wrong time
Your mask won't hide their racial bias
Ain't no crime just, lack of whiteness
So pick your poison, good luck surviving
Damn

Darkest days, brightest nights
Cries for help, sho’ you right
We been tired all our lives
Living, losing under lights