Shad, B & F Kabango - Brother (Watching) lyrics

(I've been watching everything
Oh, brother, brother, brother)


I try to hold some hope in
My heart for these African youths
Coming up where I'm from, many traps to elude
Surrounded by mostly white and affluent dudes
And somehow
You expected to have mastered this smooth
Swagger and move with the right walk
The right talk fashion and crews
Souls subtly attacked and abused
And what's funny's being black wasn't cool
Where I'm from till suddenly you started
Hearing rap in the school
Hallways, amidst this madness I grew
With a knack for amusing through this
Little skill for rapping at dudes
And we all like to laugh at the truth
But when you young and the same facts
Pertain to who you rapping 'em to
Well, I opted not to bring that to the booth
But after a while
It sort of starts nagging at you
The crazed infatuation with blackness
The trash that gets viewed
And the fact that the tube only
Showed blacks acting the fool
And I was watching


(Saturated with negative images and
A limited range of possibilities is strange)
And it's sad cause that naturally do
Sort of condition your mind and over
Time that's what's attractive to you
So young blacks don't see
Themselves in scholastic pursuit's
Or the more practical routes
It's making tracks or it's hoops
Or God-forbid moving packs for the loot
Shoot, even with this music we so limited
It's rap or produce
And that narrow conception of
What's black isn't true of course
Still we feel forced to adapt to this view
Like there's something that we're
Having to prove now add that to the slew
Of justifications the capitalists use
For the new blaxploitation
Many actions excused
In the name of getting cash
That's adversely impacting our youth
With mental slavery, the shackles is loose
And it's hard to cut chains when
They attached at the roots
So what the new black activists do
For our freedom is just being them
Do what you're passionate to
Not confined by a sense that
You have to disprove
Any stereotypes, so-called facts to refute
Or match any image of blackness
They've established as true
Perhaps we'll break through
The glass ceiling, shatter the roof
And emerge
From these boxes that they have us in-cooped
And grow to smash the mould
That they casted of you i'll keep watching