Oddisee - You Grew Up lyrics

Let me take it back to my childhood
When Six Flags was still called Wild World
Where I had every race as a neighbor and
We was working class
Trying to make it out of our hood
My best friend back then was a white kid
We was tight, he liked the same things I did
Despite us being different colors, man
We was tight as Elmer's
And we called each other brothers
While I was trying to keep my Nikes clean
He was trying to scuff his Chucks up
He was grunge, I was fresh, we were young
And we'd cuss along to rap and try
To sneak up into punk clubs
But things changed when his pops got laid off
He blamed my father for the loss of his job
He said immigrants robbed citizens jobs
And I better never set foot again in his yard
As we became adults in a cult called America
He got himself a job as an officer of law


My thoughts got blacker and
His views got cracker
There was no way backwards
To the roots at heart many years apart
I recognized him in the news
He shot a black man that
Was sitting in his car
Near the same park where we
Used to shoot hoops
And all I could blame was the cause

You grew up no, you didn't change
You were made the same
As those before you came you grew up
All our growing pains
Were given like our names
You just bought the blame you grew up

No, you didn't change you were made the same
As those before you came you grew up
All our growing pains
Were given like our names
You just bought the blame you grew up

You ever have a friend that became a fanatic?
Most of you all haven't, but if you ever did
You'd understand the one thing they
All have in common
That somebody took advantage of their
Damage as a kid
I knew a guy whose folks were professors
Proof in the flesh that Allah was a blesser
Grew up in a mid-western town
Where there weren't many brown people
He could seek reflection
Got picked on in school during lectures
Graduated hating everybody in his class
Picked on because he prayed at
Five to the East and he didn't eat meat that
Allah said was bad
One day, a man approached him in a mosque
Changed his life when he asked him a question
"Do you ever feel your life was a loss?
And what if I could teach you
That life is a weapon?"
Attracted strong to the feeling of acceptance
He was soon gone with delusions of a cause
People of the present had faces of the past
Make it easier to blast them if
He feel they did him wrong
You can raise a child in a house full of love
But can't keep them safe in
A world full of hate so, he blew up
The only mistake that could
Hold all the blame

You grew up no, you didn't change
You were made the same
As those before you came you grew up
All our growing pains
Were given like our names
You just bought the blame you grew up

No, you didn't change you were made the same
As those before you came you grew up
All our growing pains
Were given like our names
You just bought the blame you grew up

My heart's a jug and, when I was born
It was filled with love
It ranneth over, life ran me over
I spilled the blood
I poured the cups and I left it
Up to you to say enough
Never ending, never quenching, I sealed it up
Tried to change my reality, but settled for
Real enough life is better when you're
Thinking lesser, go on, give it up
When I was younger, I was so determined
I would change it all Couldn't fly
But wasn't chained to fall
So where is it I put the blame and cause
Well, I grew up