"Home" lyrics

I have discovered there are parts of me that are off limits
A location that I'm not willing to share
A place that I have unknowingly been protective of, though just recently understood what and where and why

How I discovered this place deep in my soul
Surrounded by electrically charged barbed wire, was when
Someone once asked me, in all innocence, what does spin the bloc mean
I was surprised by my response
It felt like my home was under siege
I told him I'd never tell him
He said okay
I walked away, came back over to him
And said I'd never tell him
He said you just said that
I said exactly
He who has ears to hear

He did not deserve this
I just felt like he ain't see the signs
This is off limits
It's not your house, I ain't invite you over

Now, we always be faced with this paradox
That if we share, they just take
But if we don't, they just take and redesign it
It's just a lose-lose scenario

But mostly, it's just
The question felt invasive
That's when I knew that place I been protecting is my home

My home is our slang
My home is our story
Our speech is our experience
Our protest
Our joy
Our safety
Our legacy

Inviting you into my slang is inviting you into my home
I protect mine at all costs
Everybody can't come over
Y'all pull up rearranging furniture in ways that don't even make sense
Words like woke and swag and jam
You out here Columbusing definitions, like even the meaning of words are under your supremacy
But not on my watch

The stories told in this diction
Is the blood coursing through our collective body politic
The legitimizing force in me calling you cuzzo and sisterhood, auntie and unc
I don't know that man, but I know that man

Like our communities
Gentrifying slang is desecration of our sacred space
These words are holy scriptures
Where prophets teach us the virtue of laying aside the selfish act of filling up our gas tank
Because we in VIP wit a fresh tall white tee, so all drinks
Turn to your neighbor and say wipe me down

Home a sacred space
There are some cleansing ceremonies you need to go thru
Purified by the fire of red and blue lights
To know the smell of hair after being singed by tasers
It's slightly different than hot combs

Having been made holy by blood and concrete
Baptized in an ocean of hopelessness, still I rise
Choked out and called out for yo mamma
Hot grease creating scatter plots of pain up and down your arm when it pops off

Big head, hard head, knuckle head
June Bug Jr, Duce Tre, how your mamma doin' head ass
Locked the game after having to knock twice

It's not all suffering, but suffering seasons our meals to perfection
I can see why it's too spicy for ya
I'll leave you to your boiled unwashed chicken in peace, my non-leg-washing brothers

Everyone needs a set of stories to call home
A place our children will always find shelter
No matter where their travels take them
Home will be on their lips and in their art

I'm not going to explain my slang
You are playing with children's inheritance
Our art is our home
Our monuments Motown
Dilla beats, Dre drums
Photo albums filled with survival
And some that chose ocean over oppression
Because all other ground is sinking sand

Home look we give to the other one at work in meetings means you know our address
We finna spin the block on this job ain't we
This slang is my home

I feel like everyone should have a place that's off limits
Where love and identity sit and share a meal with meaning and acceptance
Where explanations are unnecessary
Where you good can mean several things
Based on where the tonal accent is placed
And is still never misunderstood

See, we can be deeply serious about unserious things
And very unserious about serious things
I take my home everywhere I go
It wasn't that dude's fault, I just wasn't ready for company