Inspiring track from Akala’s new album, The Thieves Banquet.

How many musicians are willing and able to talk about the corrosive effect of male supremacy on the family?! Big ups to Akala and Selah on this one.

Wonderful video as ever from Global Faction. Love the cameo from the excellent Lez Henry also.

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Akala’s new Fire In The Both shows once again that Akala brings the full package of lyrical skill, content, flows, relevance and personality. Forget all these wannabe gangsters and autotune bubblegum rappers! Akala has set the standard. Who’s rising to the challenge?

Akala’s mixtape ‘Knowledge Is Power vol 1’ will be released on 28 May. Preorder it here.

10 minutes of great insight from Akala, without a doubt one of the leading cultural figures in the scene. Akala exposes some of the major problems in the UK underground/black music scene, addressing in particular the issue of cultural colonialism, whereby the corporate power structure uses its economic domination to shape the music towards its own agenda.

Akala

Big love to Nana D for creating this video for “Get Your Hands Off Africa” (by Marcel Cartier, featuring Akala and Nana D, produced by Agent of Change).

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Check the Agent of Change Soundcloud for the download and more free high quality music.

FREE DOWNLOAD: Marcel Cartier ft Akala and Nana D – Get Your Hands Off Africa (prod Agent of Change)

Check this brand new track by Marcel Cartier, featuring Akala and Nana D, and produced by Agent of Change. A Kwanzaa gift for y’all 🙂

Lyrics:

[Marcel verse 1]

Those who do not move do not feel their chains
But the African people are aware of the pain
Aware of the game, invader deception
Black presidents who are White Man extensions
People from Cape to Cairo rebel
Cos fake independence and ongoing hell
Colonial ties still keep ’em chained
The richest continent’s getting robbed again
The IMF and World Bank criminal schemes
What about reparations? To me it seems
That every metropole from Amsterdam
To Paris and Brussels was built with the hands
Of African labour, a slave relation
Developing Europe at the expense of their nation
But Africans rebelled from the first conquest
Took back independence at last accomplished

[Nana D chorus]

You’d better get your hands off… AFRICA!
You’d better get your hands off… AFRICA!

[Marcel verse 2]

Look at Africom, the African Command
That’s the US and her puppets shaking each others’ hands
They went in for Libya, going for Uganda
When will we learn we can’t be sleeping any longer?
Still salivating over claiming Zimbabwe
The worst man alive to them is Robert Mugabe
But land should belong to the African masses
Not a small group of white settler bastards
My fellow Europeans wanna whine and groan
About losing what we stole, that is not our home
That is not our land, need to choose the side
Of the future of humanity, the old has expired
If you ever want peace then you better want justice
Most of the continent is far from accustomed
Sarkozy, Cameron and Africa’s son
Better know that their war can never ever be won

[Nana D chorus]

You’d better get your hands off… AFRICA!
You’d better get your hands off… AFRICA!

[Akala verse]

The mother continent where we all originate
Eugenics ain’t dead so it’s cool to eliminate humanity’s darker shade
Genocidal AIDS, ancient civilisations
Not a continent of slaves
In every step of the way the elites have helped pave the way
For all the madness that we’re seeing today
But that in no way excuses the centuries of rape
But if we’re gonna solve it it’s an issue we have to face
Because every brother ain’t a brother just because of their colour
Look at the hand that killed Patrice and Thomas and others
While millions murdered in the Congo it don’t make the news
But if a footballer’s wife should buy a pair of shoes
I’m supposed to give a fuck, apparently
I do not! The world’s a reflection of your block
And if you think a world that can profit from African death
And be totally cool
Thinks that you’re better cos you live here
You’re a fucking fool

[Nana D chorus]

You’d better get your hands off… AFRICA!
You’d better get your hands off… AFRICA!

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More wisdom in these 2,000 words than most people receive in five years of secondary school! Massive respect to Raghav for transcribing the lyrics (I don’t even want to think about how long it must have taken!).

Yes, I grew up on the dole in a single parent family
Been through a little bit of tragedy
Yes I was around drugs and violence
Before the day that I started secondary
And that’s part of it
Not half of it
Get the picture, the rest ain’t necessary
Growin’ up, got a little caught up
But that ain’t even half of my life
I was also given the knowledge of self
That is all we actually need to survive
If you saw me aged 9, reading Malcolm just fine
Teachers still treated me stupid
Students that couldn’t speak English, they put me in groups with
And the irony is
Some of the first man to give me schoolin’
You would call gangsters
But I already explained, we know what the truth is
They used to say ‘Don’t be like me’
Yeah I got a name and dough on the street
Night time comes, I can’t sleep
And that’s the part that rappers don’t speak
We don’t hit the road cos we are thugs
Don’t come out the womb, wanting to sell drugs
If we got the right guidance and love
Would we fight people just like us?
How could I knock the hustle to get by?
How do you think I ate as a child?
Judge no one, done many things wrong
I just don’t boast about it songs
But listen to my older bars
I was just as confused as you probably are
But you grow and you learn
Travel and f*** up,
One too many man you know get cut up
One too many man that could’ve been doctors
End up spending their whole life boxed up
You learn, if you study
Its all set out just to make them money
No cover, it’s all about getting poor people to fight with one another
So its logical that us killing our brothers,
Dissin’ our mothers
Is right in line with the dominant philosophy of our time
But time is a cycle, not a line
Comes back around you regain your mind
You be ready for the energy I channel in my rhymes
Remedy the pedigree, the jeopardy of mine
When the world’s this f***ed up, lethargy’s a crime
We can all fight with our brothers over crumbs,
Far harder to fight the one who makes guns
We can all talk sh** and get two dollars
Far harder to be the one who seeks knowledge
If we understood economics
We’d know money’s nothin’
Think nothing of it
Money is a means to get wealth, not the wealth itself
Don’t get confused, I’m far from broke
All that you see me do I own
But I wont hang what I make around my neck
I know from where that the diamonds came
But I do quite literally own a library,
That definitely costs more than your chain
And businesses, and properties
Far from starvin’, I eat quite properly
And I don’t care, just said it for the kids
Who need to know that you’re not broke to listen
Don’t know an asset from a liability
They’ve never been shown or told the difference
So they don’t change situations
Richest man in Britain is Asian
That’s significant, not coincidence,
Asian people build businesses,
Not by flossin/going out shoppin’
Giving out their culture for everyone’s profit
Who run’s Bollywood? Indian people
Who owns our shit?
So we shake our arse and dance
As if racism just upped and vanished
But has it? No its right on course
You’re beaten so bad, you’re trained to ignore
Let me not just make sweeping statements
Gimme a second, I’ll explain it
For small amounts of drug possession there’s more black people in jail in America than there is for rape and armed robbery and murder all put together
You can say they’re just locking up thugs,
Imagine if they locked up every middle class kid that had ever held drugs,
Oh that’s right, that’d be your kids!
Bigger than that what is going on with this,
Prison in America’s a private business
They get paid 50k per year per inmate by the State, just wait…
Also legally are allowed to use their prison inmates as slaves
Cheap slave labour, big corporations
They come out of jail, can’t get a job
So when we celebrate going to jail,
We are LITERALLY CELEBRATING ENSLAVEMENT
Add to that, that the hood that you’re livin’
Engineered social condition that breeds crime by design
Where do you think you get your nine?
You can say that they’re just black,
But I like to deal with facts
In the 1920s you would’ve found in America
Black towns,
Prospering centres of economics and education to make you proud
But some people couldn’t bear that the former slaves would not just lie down
So the KKK and other hate groups burnt those towns to the ground
Killin hundreds,
If it ain’t understood,
You think you were always livin’ in the hood?
Shit it’s only been sixty years
Since they hung blacks and burned em’
And that was so cool
Day reel passes, picnic baskets
Even gave kids the day off school
To go see a lynchin’
Have a picnic
It’s fun to watch the little monkeys die(!)
Then people act a little dysfunctional
You wanna pretend that you don’t know why
If your colour means you can be killed
And you’re powerless to get justice about it
Is it difficult to figure out how you would then end up feelin’ about it?
And that ain’t excuses,
Just dealing with the roots of abuses that make a reality
Where a generation of young men speak of ourselves as dirt casually
That’s America,
This Britain,
Some things are similar,
Some different,
In this country the first enslaved were the working class
What’s changed?
Worst jobs, worst conditions
Worst taxed, look where you’re livin’
You go to the pub, Friday night,
You will fight with a guy,
Don’t know what for,
But won’t fight with a guy, suit and a tie,
Who sends your kids to die in a war,
They don’t sell the kids of the richer politicians,
It’s your kids, the poor british
That they send to go die in a foreign land
For these wars you don’t understand,
Yeah they say that you’re British
And that lovely patriotism they feed ya
But in reality you have more in common with immigrants
Than with your leaders
I know, both side of my family
Black and white are fed ghetto mentality
Reality in this system,
Poor people are dirt regardless of shade
But with that said,
Let’s not pretend that everything is the same
When our grandparents came here to Britain
If you had a criminal record you couldn’t get in
Yet that ain’t protect them from all the stupid, stupid abuses they would be livin’
Kicked in the teeth,
Stabbed in the street,
Many times fired bombed our houses,
Put faeces through our letter box
And of course the cops did so much about it(!)
Daily, up to the 80s
People spittin’ into my pram cos’ I was a coon baby
But of course that has had no effect on why today we are crazy
And none of this was for any good reason
They were just dark and breathing
To ease the guilt now for all of this treatment
Constant stereotypes and needed
So if I celebrate how big that my dick is,
Bricks that I’m flippin’
Clips that I’m stickin’
Chicks that I’m hittin’
I’m playing my position
But if I teach a kid to be a mathematician,
Messin’ with the schism,
How they gonna fill a prison when materialism is no longer our religion?
What do you think we got now in Britain?
Just like America, private prisons
Prisons for profit!
That mean when your kids go jail people make money off it,
So keep environments that breed crime
Build more jails at the same time
Market badness to the kids in the rhymes
As long as rich kids ain’t dying its fine!
Get em’ to the point where some are so lost
They actually believe that if they don’t celebrate killin’ themselves off
That it’s because they’re soft
Was Malcom soft?
Was Marley soft?
Tell me was Marcus Garvey soft?
Well? Was Mohammed Ali soft?
Nah, Nah I think not!
But they want us to think that the road is cool
Being on road is all we can do
We don’t control the wholesale productions
Who benefits from us movin’ the food?
Or thinking there’s no way out of road life
But Malcolm X used to hustle out on the roadside
When Marcus Garvey organised more than 6million people
With no Facebook or Twitter
Why is this something you cannot equal?
Shiiiiit!
One of my homeboys did a ten straight in the box in yard
Now what’s he doing?
Passin’ his doctorate
Don’t tell me that it’s too hard!
Who trained you to believe that you’re inferior?
Sungbo Eredo in Nigeria are the remains of an ancient moat,
Dug 1000 years ago
20 metres wide, 70 down,
Round the remains of an ancient town
That’s 400 square miles around
400 square miles around
Please, please don’t believe me,
It was a documentary on BBC!
But we ain’t studyin’ history,
Too busy watching MTV
And MTV said wear platinum,
Now everybody wanna go and wear platinum,
And MTV said pop magnums,
Now everybody wanna go and pop magnums
If MTV said drink prune juice
You would start hearing that in tunes soon,
‘Hey! Today I wore my Cartier,
Is it now more important what I got to say?’
Oh and I drive a Mercedes by the way
So everybody listen to what I got to say
Huh, does that make you all happy?
Ahh but shit my head’s still nappy
Think for myself, still some mad at me
But on the mic ain’t not one bad as me
All of this here’s good for the rhymes
Put us in the same place at the same time
And it’s clear to everybody that I’m out of my mind
Some of these guys are runnin’ out of their rhymes
Clear to everybody that has got ears
I’m the guy that they just might fear
They wanna get near but they can’t have a peer
Ah dear I’m hard liquor you’re just like beer
Front on the kid for another five years
Come to my shows and some cry tears
It mean that much to em’, it’s a movement!
I don’t speak for myself but a unit,
Black, white, man, woman, anyone that respects truth we put in
Dudes are like dinner with no puddin’
Yeah you’re sweet but no substance puddin’
You could never ever be with a level on
Our songs get out played out there in Lebanon
We speak for the people properly
Not for the old fat guys in offices
And the girls love him, it ain’t fair
He can’t even be bothered to comb his hair
Anyway that’s enough kissin’ my own arse
Back to the more important task of being so shower
I got half the hood screaming “KNOWLEDGE IS POWER”
And I ain’t saying that will change rap
But I do know this for a fact
Right now there’s a yout’ on your block
With his hands on his balls, face screwed up
Swear he don’t care, don’t give a fuck
That he won’t let nobody caught his block
But the words go in
Open your shackles
Because once that’s happened there’s no going back
Once you start to see what is really happening
Who the enemy you should be attackin’ is
So READ, READ, READ!
Stuck on the block, READ, READ!
Sittin’ in the box, READ, READ!
Don’t let them say what you can achieve
Cos when people are enslaved
One of the first things they do is stop them reading
Cos’ it is well understood that intelligent people will take their freedom
Cos’ if we knew our power we would understand that we can’t be held down
If we knew our power, we would not elevate not one of these clowns
If we knew our power, we wouldn’t get arrogant when we get two pennies
If we knew our power, we would see what everybody sees, that we’re rich already!
But never mind MCs go run for your mummy
I’m hungry, I run for my tummy
That’s enough back to worshipping money
I’m off, back to the study!

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The ‘Celtic warrior maroon from yard’ drops pure knowledge for the block over a hard grime beat. Four minutes of mindblowing skills and wisdom!

It would take hours to transcribe the whole thing, but here’s the last bit:

This whole thing’s chess
And they want us to celebrate the fact that we are just pawns
But man are not on it
See the last thing they want
Is for man with road energy to stop killing one another and think cleverly
And ask why you’re living where you’re living, how you’re living
Did you create the condition that you were raising your kid in?
If you didn’t, who did it?
Is it really for the hood if our oppressors like our lyrics?
Only by crushing your aspirations can we maintain this here situation
Only by crushing the dreams of your kids quick
Can we keep our unearned privilege
And that’s what it’s all about

Knowledge is power!

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On Saturday 7 May, from 6.30pm, Sons of Malcolm and friends will be holding a panel debate and gig in tribute to the legendary MC Smiley Culture. I’ll definitely be heading down there, and would encourage you to do the same if you’re in or around London!

There will be a panel debate including Merlin Emmanuel (nephew of Smiley Culture), Lee Jasper, Dr Lez Henry and Isis Amlak; and a gig with Durrty Goodz, Akala, RoXXXan and more.

Check the Facebook event page for more info
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Brilliant interview with Akala where he addresses some very deep issues to do with the music industry and the state of UK hip-hop. A must-watch. Big ups Mr 13 for asking some great questions!

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