KRS-One - Free (The Book SongKRS-One) lyrics

I'ma tell you the truth though (Really?)

I like to read a lot books be uplifting me
Words help you see a lot
This book was a gift to me
Chuck D Presents This Day In
Rap and Hip-Hop History
It's a reference book and puts important
Dates in lists for me
Jamel Shabazz A Time Before Crack
A photographic history of hip-hop
From way way back
(His martha gupa's?) Hip-Hop Father
Charlie Ahern Wild Style
And 50 Cent's Fifty and More
I used to read this to my child
Sometimes I look at my library and I'll smile
Cause if I can't find it on the shelf
I know it's there
Meanwhile, there's other books without the
Hooks and out looks
I like to cook so I'll read about cooks
I can't live without books
I like books, I recite books
I even write books a lot
Science and rap, ruminations
Gospel of hip-hop
But let me spit a quick list, a book list
That's really short
The first book that you should
Get is really a passport
Travel, that's key but the books cannot lie
Unlock your mind by reading
Lines of new topics
Place your optics on books
Of real black knowledge
Beginning with Carter G woodson
I'm paying homage his book
Mis-Education of the Negro is essential
For freeing your mind from
The slavery that's mental
Turn up this instrumental
You ain't dealing with an amateur
I'm reading Walter Rodney How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa
That's the man to thank, high pray
Let's look at The Birth of
Black America by Andrew Frank
Take that to the bank
Let me rock again, hip-hop again
Check out Africa: Mother of Western
Civilization by Yosef Ben-Jochannan
Check out Black Man of the
Nile again by Yosef Jochannan
Civilization or Barbarism by Cheikh
Anta Diop and then
Black Indians by William Loren Katz
Take it back anything by Dr cornel West
You need to go get that
Michael Eric Dyson, all his books
Go get all of that
Henry Louis Gates, PBS, show support for that
I'm like go with the almanac
Books I got the tallest stack
The Brooklyn Public Library
Yeah that's where I started at
I read up everything
Every book that I can see
While these others went to college
I got my knowledge for free
Philosophy, theology, paleoanthropology
Mythology, economy
I studied these subjects entirely for free

They was free! You got to see me
It was free! Open your eyes
And see! It was free! You've got to see
Good things in life are free
Don't waste your money

Let us continue on the menu
With these reference books
Like the Oxford English Dictionary for
Words it's a better look
It deals with word history
Before and after them but it's funny
In the A section you can't
Find the word African
But these books, don't start
Trashing em, bashing em, harassing em
It just shows accurately the
Racism to the maximum
Here's American Heritage Dictionary
4th edition
Here's what it looks like when you look
At the definition of Shirley Chisholm
Peep the wisdom and the complication
Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman
To seek the Democratic
Presidential nomination
You talk about breaking new ground
Shirley's profound
But in the American Heritage Dictionary
This is nowhere to be found
This is an American
Heritage Dictionary reference
And Shirley Chisholm's run for president
Doesn't get one sentence
I'm just pointing it out, scholarship
What it's all about don't just read
Find out what these authors are all about

I'm free! It was free!
You got to see me it was free!
Open your eyes and see! It was free!
You've got to see
Good things in life are free
Don't waste your money