Vanity Slaves lyrics - Kendrick Lamar

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?