[Intro: Erykah Badu]
This bitter land
Watered with my soul
The fruit it bears
Leaves me so cold
This bitter land
Does nothing for love
This bitter land
Brings pain from above, oh-oh
[Verse 1: Nas]
Yeah, running on the concrete across the train tracks
The devil is behind me
In the ghetto where’s you’ll find me, it’s where I stays at
Cop shot us up, he get a medal then retire
But it never will define me
Write a letter to the president, whoever in control of the society
Tell ’em stop riding me, stop driving us into a suicidal ideology
Tryna feed my seeds
Getting high on weed, study my degrees
Stay fly, getting paper
With some dead white people faces in the circle of spaces around the green
I’ma lean, taking Percs as a bit of Earth
Is a nigga cursed? Am I blessed? See what I mean
It’s a test, life is a test
Life is like a hood, hard
Trying not to fall between the cracks
In the cracks it’s so dark, and the dark
Seems more appealing than the light in the land
Where you gotta fight
Catch a body in the night, we need a plan
To survive, to survive the land
Survive the storm, when it comes through
Either you’re busy living or busy dying, look what it’s come to
Look what it’s come to, so what you’re gonna do?
[Verse 2: Erykah Badu]
This bitter land is far too real
This bitter land, it does not heal
Cause in the land skies are grey
But we fight the storms that come our way
A boy who strives to be a man
Must push to lead with all he can
Oh, this bitter land
Oh, bitter land
Oh, oh, oh, oooh
This bitter land can’t stop my fight
This bitter land
[Outro: Nas + (Erykah Badu)]
Look what it’s come to
So what you gonna do?
(My land)