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Reflections Internal
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Reflections Internal
poetry spoken word hip ho
Legacy Leonard acclaimed spoken word artist, poet, and singer that combines poetry for social change and conscious elevation with song and rhythms.
In 1995, at the age of 15, Legacy Leonard made her debut as a spoken word artist at the Detroit Institute of Arts. She blends a variety of socially conscious, revolutionary, and thought provoking poetry with song and soul, painting the pictures of the world and society as seen through her eyes. Her passion for the art is surpassed only by her passion for change and revolution. She is an Urban Griot that believes the Power belongs to the People. Enter the mind and heart of Legacy through the art of her compelling and controversial spoken word...
Song Info
Genre
Hip-Hop • Spoken Word
Charts
Peak #3,632
Peak in subgenre #56
Author
Legacy Leonard
Rights
2005
Uploaded
August 16, 2005
Track Files
MP3
MP3 5.7 MB • 128 kbps • 6:14
Story behind the song
Written in tribute to the plight of Black women and men.
Lyrics
Reflection…Reflection….Reflection…. It’s hard learning to love myself When everyday there is a barrage of images Assaulting my senses Sometimes I think my life is a mirage I set my wooly halo free Blow clouds of equality To unleash my train of thought Remembering ancestors sold and bought How desperately they fought Even as masters sought to break their spirits I spit lyrics To reincarnate slave souls Empower me to become whole once again I write freedom songs to remind me To stay strong Sometimes it’s so hard As I stare in the mirror Trying to re-arrange my perception Thoughts conception blocked and scrambled By tell-lies-vision That has me warring with indecision Over the beauty of me Beauty Whitewashed beauty Bleached out beauty In size zero dimensions That doesn’t fit my nappy, thick hipped reality I have struggled to keep my crown in place My face from cracking Underneath the pressure to conform Perm-anently altering the conditioning Of my roots Nothing can substitute for the soul Combating the turmoil That seeks to destroy my seed I bleed lines of history Scarred Mentally Physically Spiritually All the while holding on to the strength That flows in my bloodlines Can’t hide behind enemy lines I have to defeat the enemy inside Release my mind from the lies that bind It’s no secret that Eurocentric notions Have assaulted Black women Trying to make us feel inferior Separated our soul from our psyche Slicing down to the core of our existence Insistent that we bow down Be broken before burdens Strapped to our backs Double blast stereotype To be female and Black Hinged on hysteria Since the first whip cracked across a Black man’s back Witnessed emasculation As we were forced to watch, our men denigrated and disrespected Hung high from poplar trees Hung our love and our hopes With those same frayed ropes Leaving us with frayed sanity Tried to destroy Black families By raping our men of their manhood Elevate white womanhood Praise her virtues While we nurtured white babies from the same breast That Massa suckled by night But paraded Missus in the daylight Kept our men fielded in hopelessness Bound by our misery and helplessness Forced to raise entire generations alone Forced to create homes without Fathers Forced to carry the bloodline and heritage of a race Put on Blackface All the time breaking inside Yet still keeping the steel in our spine Quietly disintegrating into dissension As the love and understanding between our men and women Diminished Into this state of emergency There is urgency for the restoration of our relationships Ship sinking on seas of despair Black lives in a state of disrepair Because we failed to relate and communicate Cannot seem to see past the past pains Or through the current rain To remember the truth of who we are Its time to heal those scars Elevate the seeds that are our stars Of hope that Allah has placed in our hands To reclaim the time before we were stolen from our homelands Restore the black souls that died once Afrikan feet touched these soiled soils of Amerikkka Breathe life back into the barren corpse of Black love and unity There is no re-uniting of our lost identities Without reclaiming our divinity This poem is written For the liberation of Black women For the liberation of Black men For the liberation of Black children Let no more words of discord and destruction be spoken Between us Let no more love fail and fade between us Let no more brainwashing Deny us of our destiny For we are the sons and daughters Of greatness Of beauty Of lovers Mothers and Fathers of Civilization Arise this day and reclaim yourselves Reclaim our Black Nation…
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