Knowledge Is Power Lyrics & Chords By Akala

We claim we're lovin' this hip hop
Are we ready to understand it
In its fullest cultural state
Beyond its useless branding
Beyond the story that keeps us telling us the common myth
People started rapping in the 70's what a bunch of shit
Done with the talk
Im lovin New York for impact in my heart
But lets not pretend there was no foundation to this art
Cos KRS-ONE and Bam would be the first ones to say
Birth of hip hop runs far deeper within our veins
Before Kool Herc came to New York pumping 100 watts
Before the Watts Prophets, Last Poets and Gil Scott
Before there was Jazz
Before there was Blues
Before there was Cab Calloway
Before the whips the ships and all the tragedy
Before we were stripped of Knowledge of our cultural anatomy
You could be hip hop for generations you're still family
Before there were slaves, fuck the bullshit about slave music
You must have had a cultural base to even produce it
The schools of Timbuktu they already knew
The cycles of the planet and the motion of the moon
150 years before Galileo check it
And medieval Benin's in the Guinness book of records
And all of them cultures there… they had a Griot speaker
A story telling musician poet and history keeper
Who had to memorise a couple thousand oral epics
The tradition still exists today but it could get neglected
And hip hop? Needs to be understood
In its fullest context not just as a product of the hood
Cos Miles Davis was rich and still played with the same feeling
It's that cultural memory go and ask Steven
Ella Fitz Gerald scatting's basically rapping
If you know we lost our language then you know what has happened
So when you hear somebody's rapping?
The base of its is African
Its not about excluding nobody its just accurate…
KNOWLEDGE... IS... POWER!
Don't let them tell you 'bout yourself
Never that's your wealth
KNOWLEDGE... IS... POWER!
If you dont feed your mind how can you live in health?
KNOWLEDGE... IS... POWER!
Don't let them tell you 'bout yourself
Never that's your wealth
Look around hip hop's becomes this global voice
But we must understand its roots so we can have a choice
What we should do with it how to use it
How to teach our students
Cos Viacom is not our cultural institution
But it will use this culture for its prostitution
And our destruction, anything but a solution
The ghetto dilemma's as bad as its ever been
People are dead, just ain't rememberin'
Roots of the rhythm and bass
[?] thing is as good as the parts that assemble it
Hamlet is writing, we think the pencil is
People are sacred, we think the Temple is
If i'm uncomfortable you shouldn't mention it
Im superior so watch your sentences
Don't disturb my privileged pensioners
Living off ignorance of all the members of
Every one of all the people we severed off
Never one of all the people we're never soft
Any gun or the better we sell it off
Any sum of all the cheddar we level off
Cultural suicide is a necessity
To get you to worship celebrity
Cos people with a strong sense of themselves could say that we'll never be
When they say that Knowledge ain't for you and your people
They're tryna' keep you less than equal
Cos deep down in themselves, that's how they really see you
Less based on status
Or the places you was raised in
Or the shape of your faces
Degrees or bank statements
So we gotta reject Whatever they set
They're never benevolent yet
Yet we sit at a desk Collecting a check
No need to ever respect
Mess coupled by death
Tripled by theft
Look at the West and the rest
Transfer knowledge transfer the power then tell me what is left
Bliss? No ignorance
It just just his head that is numbing the pain
Only the clever shit should ever change
Our development towards an aim
No bro, push of the chain
Training the muscle is training the brain
It is the same if you push through the pain
Once you are strong you are never the same
Your manner your swagger
The way that you stand up
The way that you work with your boys as a rapper
I've seen a killer convert from a trapper
To working with yout dem and tellin' em man up
I am not telling you it will get better
But if we are to fight we must keep our jab up
C'mon my people stand up