I Stand Alone

Sometimes we feel alone
 But alone ain't always wrong
 Alone in a crowded room
 My mind made up like a powder room
 I'm the sun, giving the clouds some room
 I shine, shine like the hour noon
 Tune is to stay in step with every day men
 And women, the rythym of the realness
 Still I'm Legend like Will Smith
 In the presence of the fake I am a real gift
 Open it, open it or be something dope in it
 Movement of the people getting motion sick
 We ride on the highs and lows of it
 On the Southside we got holes for it
 Standing up like Rich Pryor
 We get fire and inspire
 'Bout a prospect to get higher
 Your sire on the throne
 Grew up around the stones
 The ranger, so I stand alone
 I'm flying high up in the sky
 I feel that love, I feel that high
 I stand alone, I stand alone
 I stand alone, I stand alone
 The only test is to survive
 I will succeed I will not die
 I stand alone, I stand alone
 I stand alone, I stand alone
 Success it is, we blessed to live
 Not just my kids, want the best for his
 Progression lives where the lessons is
 I got my own, God bless the kid
 In the mid part of Babylon
 Listening to Farrakhan
 In the parks of Avalon
 Streets we would battle on
 Got the good book in my carry-on
 Life is a race I'm the marathon
 Man on the moon, give the boy some room
 Rose from the concrete, told you I would bloom
 Situation brought out the hero
 A little black 13 year old
 The voice of the Lord in my earlobe
 Telling me my purpose I could see it clearer
 Revolution in the execution of lyrics
 Spirit of Gil Scott, Marvin Gaye, modern day I pray
 x2
 The irresistible appeal of Black individuality - where has all of that gone?
 The very people who blazed our path to self-expression and pioneered a resolutely distinct and individual voice have too often succumbed to mind-numbing saneness and been seduced by simply repeating what we hear, what somebody else said or thought and not digging deep to learn what we think or what we feel, or what we believe
 Now it is true that the genius of African culture is surely its repetition, but the key to such repetition was that new elements were added each round. Every round goes higher and higher. Something fresh popped off the page or jumped from a rhythym that had been recycled through the imagination of a writer or a musician. Each new installation ore the imprint of our unquenchable thirst to say something of our own, in our own way, in our own voice as best we could
 The trends of the times be damned. Thank God we've still got musicians and thinkers whose obsession with excellence and whose hunger for greatness remind us that we should all be unsatisfied with mimicking the popular, rather than mining the fertile veins of creativity that God placed deep inside each of us