Album: Kendrick Lamar (2009)

Vanity Slaves

Uh-uh-uh, what up?
Uh, I'm tryna, what up?
Uh-uh, I'm tryna get something
Uh-uh-uh, I'm tryna, what up?
I say, what up?
Uh-uh, I'm tryna

Sometimes I wanna leave, sometimes I wanna cry
Sometimes I hate to bear the truth, sometimes I wanna lie
Sometimes I wanna school the youth, sometimes I wanna ride
Sometimes I wanna not think, sometimes I wanna vibe
Sometimes I wanna bump Tribe and zone out, this song bout a young boy
that's going wild inside, when my world collide
with your world where your girl and your kids reside
We kill the facades, we feel free to fly
We're birds that reserve in the charismatic sky
I care about my pride too much, if my clothes is new
if my ride is plush, if my hair is cut, if my diamonds is crushed
I look in the mirror, I'm trendy enough? Wrong
Insecurity roams the black community
Homes where kids must have jewelry
The high school female need earrings and details
so she can be cool to be amongst popularity
The various name brands that reach the price scan
that's not about the right price, but more like the right scam
to rule us all, confuse us all
Hit the bank within five minutes and then withdraw
Now let's draw the picture of a rapper with a chain
in a Range that is not paid for
My cousin from the South said he just bought him a house
that lives around his neck like a white collar
So why fast forward? Then I rewind
A time machine can help me double back to slavery times
Picking cotton from a field that a white man own
The blacker you are, farther you from the white man's home
Negro spiritual zones gave us some type of sanity
Before your vanity they parted our families
They put us in hundred-degree shade, and outside we bathed
The more we were afraid, the more they made rules
and trapped our minds in the cage, our freedom was so fake
Couldn't see it with the eyes of Tracee Ross, uh!
And school was exempt, see we couldn't have smarts
and a smirk could get you hurt, wound diversed from a scar
Four-hundred years of nothing, four-hundred years of suffering
Four-hundred years of tears and tribulation, miseducation
See what we facing is now coming, back to the roots
Remember whips on our back and if we would run they would shoot?
Call us niggers and figured that we'd never lived in pursuit
of happiness, we captured these feelings in things that we do
Thought it's abstinence in slavery, but we made it come to
a modern perspective, my shoe selection gotta be Louie
Her handbag gotta be Gucci, it's fake then she foobie
She still bad though, and her fake Gucci ain't that bad though
We filling up the gas for Rollies
Upgrade to twenty-sixes, out there riding Kobes
My cousin from the South, slavery start in the South and I bet ya
he overcompensates for the life of his ancestors
So blame it on the four-hundred years we never saw
The reason why the next four-hundred we gotta floss
Slaves

Uh, I say the four-hundred years we never had nothing
Barely had clothes on our back
It's the reason why when we get a little bit of change
we over-exaggerate on our living expenses
So if you get your first big check and you cop a chain before you buy a house
You're a vanity slave
If you're a female and you got four, five, six rings on your finger
four holes in your left ear and a nose piercing
You're a vanity slave
If you got an '02 Monte Carlo with twenty-fo's on it
and on the back of the window it says "get on my level hoe"
You're a vanity slave
We all vanity slaves
and with that being said, can somebody please tell me where the mall at?
I'm not from around here
Hey Ali, where we at? Idaho?
Yeah nigga, you know the first of the month
You know them checks come in
I'm tryna get something, but what up?