[Intro]
Uh, testing

[Verse 1]
Take it all, and what do you have?
A kid on a Sunday taking a bath
You can't sleep, he's way too excited
He dreams of a place where everyone's invited to his first day of school
He's got a new shirt, new jeans and new shoes
He walks in the classroom, next to the bathroom
He sits down quick and everybody asks him:
"Where you from? Why don't you got no lunch money?"
"What do you mean free lunch? And why you talk funny?"
I'm from California, my dad's in the Air Force
I get free lunch cause the state takes care of us
Took a ball and plays that down with the Play-Doh
White kids blocks black kids with thе legos
I didn't notice the sеparation until a little later
Now they got me sitting in the middle, waiting

[Chorus]
Can't take this away from me
Tell me, what do I got?
What do I got?
What do I got?
The dangers of being a black kid
Can't take this away from me
Tell me, what do I got?
What do I got?
What do I got?
The dangers of being a black kid
[Verse 2]
Seventh grade, and I'm at Stone Mountain Junior High
Where the kids straight bouncing off the walls
The odds are against you
On the first day somebody peed in my tennis shoe
I laid low, I didn't talk or speak
Until they saw me wear a shirt twice in the same week
Now they're on my face, and they slap me in the face
They steal my inhaler and hide it under the table
I didn't care much about the bullying and picking on
But that to me most, was the blatant contradiction
I was too white in my speech and my action
But other black kids were too dark in complexion
They hate what the black kids who were cool in the school
They enforced it but didn't make up the rules
The white kids had done it to the black kids first
And then they wanted to do it so I make things worse
See, everybody wants to be exclusive
So they can feel important, instead of fucking useless
And everybody's looking out for number one
And everybody wants to get a certain moment in the Sun
But if you stay too long you're bound to get tan
And if you're too dark then you're less than a man
And you can tell a black kid and they'll understand
But then they'll turn around and do the same to a Mexican
Survival of the meanest, "Women Are from Venus"
But far seeks are when you're dealing with the genius
It will trick you into thinking that you're just dead space
You can't be yourself because you're speaking for the race
Calculating, manipulated to make somebody happy
That you'll never meet, that don't exist, you're just kind of crappy hard place
Rocky and something that you're not
Don't take away my personality, that's all that I got
[Chorus]
You can't take this away from me
Tell me, what do I got?
What do I got?
What do I got?
The dangers of being a black kid
You can't take this away from me
Tell me, what do I got?
What do I got?
What do I got?
The dangers of being a black kid