Listen to “Nina” and more from Rapsody’s album EVE here: https://rocnat.io/n/eve
NINA

Bearing strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
And blood at the root
So bleed

Verse One

Emit light, Rap or Emmett Till
I drew a line without showing my body, that’s a skill
Bad to the bone and the grill
You’d be dead wrong if looks killed
I’m still on my spill, in the spirit of L. Hill
Eye on the sparrow, Nose like a pharoah’s
Our bloodline trill for the young and all the lil’s
We all gon’ get mills
Talk a lot of game but we get paid to like Jemele
Was raised upon a Hill
The valleys a sunken place
I’m just tryna build like I came with some kettle weight
Know I’m a God emcee ‘cus ni*** I made the devil wait
‘Fo I brought hell, you ain’t gotta tell me Im hella great
I don’t speak on it nowadays, I just meditate
Yall can have the bars, ni*** I spit hard metal gates
Henry Louis Gates when I cop’ me some new estate
Make room for myself, I’m in a way different mental place
I keep it real, all y’all look anime
I’m fine like Anna Mae, black don’t crack like Angela
Black and brave like in the A
It don’t come with apologies ‘less it’s Tip and some Andre’
When you greet me it’s Namaste
Spread love the Brooklyn way or like marmalade
No matter if you street street or more like the promenade
We gotta come together like the corn and the dookie braids
For the present and future days, Imma say what I gotta say
I am Nina and Roberta
The one you love but ain’t heard of
Got my middle finger up like Pac after attempted murder
Failed to kill me, it’s still me
Woke up singing Shirley Murdock
As we lay these edges down
brown women we so perfect
Went from field ni*** to still ni***, being cropped out the picture
But we all know who got the juice, my sistahs
Imitating us in all the Hollywood pictures
And still they’ll never be us, ni***
I from the back woods where Nina would
Sing about the life we should
lead a new dawn, another deed; I tried to do some good
Felt more damned than Mississippi was
They denied Nina in Philadelphia
And still she persevered like all the 400 years of our own blood
Africa!
Old Panthers looking back like ‘who gon’ come up after us?”
Outside the movies, I make sure before it move you
It moves me
Now bow down to a Queen, please
Survival.

Reyna Biddy Spoken word:

Here’s to the honey in you
To the bitter sweet in me
I’ve shed this blood so romantically
So viciously quiet
Here’s to a moment of silence
I’ve poured and poured my soul again
Here’s to epifanies
There was never a we
There was you all and there was me
In this war likely to succeed
Unlike me to surrender
Trying and dying to breathe poetry
To rise in the light of day
To subconsciously exist cautiously ascending towards freedom
Praying for a breather
Do you see my pain?
Do I seem like prey?
Empathy be the reason we are still standing
We are not the same I’ve lived more lives than you
I have less pride than you
I am extraterrestrial
I was created different
I’ve been here many times before
And I’ve never been defeated
And still….I will never be defeated.

Music video by Rapsody performing Nina. © 2019 Jamla Records, LLC. Under exclusive license to Roc Nation

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