Patrick Stump, Common, Robert Glasper Experiment - I Stand Alone lyrics

Sometimes we feel alone
But alone ain’t always wrong yeah

Alone in a crowded room
My mind made up like a powder room
I’m the sun, giving the clouds some room
I shine, shine like the hour noon
Tune is to stay in, step with every day men
And women, the rhythm of the realness
Still I’m Legend like Will Smith
In the presence of the fake I am a real gift
Open it
Hopin' it'd be something dope in it
Movement of the people getting motion sick
We ride on the highs and the lows of it
On the Southside, we got hosed for it
Standing up like Rich Pryor
We get fire and inspire 'bout
A prospect to get higher
Your sire on the throne grew
Up around the stones
The ranger, so I stand alone

I’m flying high up in the sky
I will not run, I will not hide
I stand alone, I stand alone
I stand alone, I stand alone
The only test is to survive
I will succeed I will not die
I stand alone, I stand alone
I stand alone, I stand alone

Success it is, we blessed to live
Not just my kids, want the best for his
Progression lives where the lessons is
I got my own, God bless the kid
In the mid part of
Babylon listening to Farrakhan
In the parks of Avalon Streets
We would battle on
Got the good book in my carry-on
Life is a race, I’m the marathon
Man on the moon, give the boy some room
Rose from the concrete
Told you I would bloom
Situation brought out the hero
A little black 13-year-old
The voice of the Lord in my earlobe
Telling me my purpose, I could see it clearer
Revolution in the execution of lyrics
Spirit of Gil Scott, Marvin Gaye
Modern day I pray

I’m flying high up in the sky
I will not run, I will not hide
I stand alone, I stand alone
I stand alone, I stand alone
The only test is to survive
I will succeed I will not die
I stand alone, I stand alone
I stand alone, I stand alone
I’m flying high up in the sky
I will not run, I will not hide
I stand alone, I stand alone
I stand alone, I stand alone
The only test is to survive
I will succeed I will not die
I stand alone, I stand alone
I stand alone, I stand alone
Alone, alone, alone alone, alone, alone

The irresistible appeal of
Black individuality -
Where has all of that gone?

The very people who blazed our path to
Self-expression and pioneered a
Resolutely distinct
And individual voice have too often succumbed
To mind-numbing sameness and been seduced
By simply repeating what we hear
What somebody else said or thought and
Not digging deep to learn what we
Think or what we feel, or what we believe

Now it is true that the genius of
African culture is surely it's repetition
But the key to such repetition was that
New elements were added each go-round
Every round goes higher and higher something
Fresh popped off the page
Or jumped from a rhythm that
Had been recycled through the
Imagination of a writer or
A musician each new
Installation bore the imprint of our
Unquenchable thirst to say
Something of our own, in our own way
In our own voice as best we could
The trends of the times be damned

Thank God we've still got
Musicians and thinkers
Whose obsession with excellence
And whose hunger
For greatness remind us that we should all
Be unsatisfied with mimicking the popular
Rather than mining the fertile
Veins of creativity that
God placed deep inside each of us