[Part I: Produced by Tomo]

[Intro: Nate Nics]
Darkest days, brightest nights
Cries for help, sho’ you right
We been tired all our lives
Living, losing under lights

[Verse 1: Nate Nics]
Yeah, Let me take you back to summertime, 2015
Where any other time I woulda found a reason to be
But hopelessness was like the theme, a reoccurring motif
Or was my energy the imagery I needed to see
I left the house a couple times a week, nothing was exciting
So I tried to get 12 hours sleep a day to pass the time and
Started vibin' with my writing more, saw the fam like once week
Windows open, shots galore and screams echoing down the street
College 'round the corner but in fact around my corner wasn't safe
If it wasn't shells or casings it was blades where kids would play
And hat was life, we heard sirens aplenty, violence and envy
Streets and caskets full of bodies, and our hearts'll be empty
It goes (it goes)

[Chorus: Karim]
Darkest days, brightest nights
Cries for help, sho’ you right
We been tired all our lives
Living lucid under the lights
Darkest days, brightest nights
Cries for help, sho’ you right
We been tired all our lives
Living lucid under the lights
[Verse 2: Nate Nics]
Yeah, and in the fall, my first semester impressive and still it left a
Sour taste of the future in mouths of my first oppressor
17, but my mental was heavy
I felt them days getting blurry and saw my consciousness ending
Didn't sleep to get them grades i didn't need and wouldn't keep
Yeah, my mom was proud of me but for myself I sought reprieves
From the paler among us, I felt the glares and the hunger
Like they missed being gathered around the branches they hung us
They turned around and saw an inconvenience being 'round us
I turned around and saw the tortures being mentally stuck
Between the silence of sacrificing my voice so I could blend in with them
And the sirens and screams colliding once I'm home in the end
It goes (it goes)

[Chorus: Karim]
Darkest days, brightest nights
Cries for help, sho’ you right
We been tired all our lives
Living lucid under the lights
Darkest days, brightest nights
Cries for help, sho’ you right
We been tired all our lives
Living lucid under the lights

[Bridge: Nate Nics & Karim]
We wear the mask that grins and lies
Hides our teeth and leaves us blind
Till our last it's crooked smiles
While tortured, bleeding hearts compile
We wear the mask that grins and lies
Hides our teeth and leaves us blind
Till our last it's crooked smiles
While broken, bleeding hearts compile
We wear the mask that grins and lies
Hides our teeth and leaves us blind
Till our last it's crooked smiles
While tortured, bleeding hearts compile
[Outro: Nikki Giovanni]
… wondering
Is my eye make-up on straight
Or a withdrawn discoursing on the stars and the moon
Instead of a for real Black person who must now feel
And inflict
Pain

[Part II: Produced by Tomo & Thot Princess]

[Intro: Nate Nics]
I wish I had a million dollars to my name
And if I did I'd prolly spend it
On a jacket, couple caskets, and a plane… yeah
So I could flee from all the trauma
And the problems that I probably can't escape
See, I made a promise to our father
Not to loathe a heart until I passed away
But today could be that day, so I pray

[Verse 1: Nate Nics]
For this cycle of violence and wicked riots to find it's
Way to end in some silence before them sirens divide us
Indecisive over brotherhood, our brother's hood is gone
Ain't no hooded justice coming, ain't no trusting in the the law
Ain't no fighting for reform, we just fight and serve as pawns
I seen 'em running, bright as summer, with the leash up on their dogs
In our city where the better bet’s to trade 'em ‘fore they gone
We been pushed, shoved and transferred just so they could mow their lawn
Still we murder one another just to say it on a song
It’s just revenge and hatred spewing through our veins it flows along
Might be wrong, but disaster's all we saw, that’s all we're taught
And there ain't no loving in the streets, the hood won't love us till we on
The white man pass the policies, the black man always take the fall
And the boys crackdown till we're deceased, apparently six feet's where we belong
And the kids tote straps and hate police, police tote straps and hate us all
With the violence all of us have seen eventually no peace left in the heart
See it’s racial violence and guns providing
Streetlight symphonies, loss, and silence
So keep your mouth shut and hope to God it's
Not you next at that candle lighting
Or standing by at wrong place wrong time
Your mask won't hide their racial bias
Ain't no crime just, lack of whiteness
So pick your poison, good luck surviving
Damn
[Outro: Nate Nics]
Darkest days, brightest nights
Cries for help, sho’ you right
We been tired all our lives
Living, losing under lights

[Stage Lights Hit]

[Applause]