“They tried to bury the seed but they didn’t know it could grow.” Trumpets up, crowns on — a roll call from Kemet and Mansa Musa to Garrett Morgan, Banneker and Mae Jemison, calling every young king and queen from Kingston to Accra, London to Brooklyn.
A trumpet-led roll call from Kemet and Mansa Musa to Banneker, Garrett Morgan and Mae Jemison — calling every young king and queen from Kingston to Accra, London to Brooklyn.
Fresh off the plane, 90 hours a week on the pallets, a metallic-blue Ford parked across two bays — and a new action hero every day of the week. Warehouse life as a double feature.
“They see the clean shirt but they don't know the way.” From the Lagos heat to the cold western grind — a hundred résumés a week, gigs below the grade, and a father's devotion pressed into cotton that keeps fraying at the collar.
“Do you love me, baby — or is it all for the taking?” Wet eyes at nightfall, a cold little deal to make it through the week, and a prayer with a face and a name: that somebody out there love me the same.
“Frozen in the system, we just trying to survive.” Master's degrees sweeping hallway floors, phantom job postings, red tape as a cage — and a diaspora fighting for crumbs while the block freezes over.
“They lock your vision in a digital cage, feeding you a script while they profit off your rage.” Three verses on algorithms, manufactured outrage, and artists selling their soul for the metric.
“They promised us milk, they promised us honey, but the dark keeps coming and it swallows your money.” Forty years old, a duffle full of hopes, and a warehouse floor in Calgary.
“Pour a little water for the souls that we lost.” Ephesians 6 and Revelation 21 over gangan drums — mourning Southern Kaduna and Plateau from a minus-thirty Canadian window, with the Zumunta Mata choir carrying the Hausa hook.
“No matter the distance, no matter the miles, everything I build is to see your smiles.” Three verses, three birthdates, three children — a father's letter home from the overseas grind.
“They build these towers high up to the sky, where the truth is twisted and the spirits die.” Kwame, Amina and Tariq — three migrant careers ground down by stolen credit, tone policing and shifting goalposts, over Fugees-esque 90s boom-bap.
Minus 40, dead radiator, empty fridge — and thanksgiving anyway. Angels in hoodies, strangers turned family, and a closing prayer that lifts the whole motherland: “Bless Africa, Father, richest drum on the earth.”
Twenty-five years traded to a classroom that never taught him who he was, a wilderness of doubt at thirty-six, and a rebirth across the ocean at forty — “reclaiming every moment that the system was stealing.”
From the 1974 memo drawn behind closed doors to the oil fields, Bogotá and the Ethiopian famine — then a letter to the freedom fighters who traded sandals for a presidential clock, closing with Garvey, Lumumba, Nkrumah and Sankara.