Lost in Dreams (feat. Roses Gabor)

Oi!

Nah, this is that North West music, yeah

Looking back on my journey from the moment I was born from nursery to man's 30s

Formative years, teens, twenties shaped man early

Thatcher years, that was the decade that mum birthed me

I'm a '80s baby, yeah, it sounds cool, but I was really born then

I grew up in North West

Wookie and Lain told us every day is like a battle, but I never had a war chess

But my mum was hard worker

Pops was hard worker

Went to school in Harlesden was a fast learner

I had a T-Mobile before the Orange merger

Those eight years prior there was a lot of murder

'02 to '10

Back when waps were called skengs

War on the whole ends

Go to parties to celebrate life

Could meet your own death

All of that to no end

In retrospect makes no sense

Nonsense

It was boys stopping boys from becoming grown men

For a thousand pound I heard a man kill his own friend

I heard they tortured one boy to the point it was grotesque

See a man go jail skinny

Come out hench, no neck

See a man go jail litty

Come home to no bread

The beef got so sticky

Left innocent boys dead

Hit boys and girls, bullets discriminate no sex

See a man go lick kettles

Get caught and go pen

Now he's sitting down and doing time for a Rolex

Oh the irony

We live so close, but we hate each other

Didn't like condoms, so now he's gotta baby mother

But it weren't his girl, now his opps can't wait to fuck her

I've seen that unfold and just send a man crazy, brudda

North West, we've had some crazy summers

Everybody 38 and under

What a way to come up

Those were the circumstances we were raising under

Rudeboys and the Gs on the come up

Lost in dreams till you slumber

Ring, ring, ring, got your number

Hey, hey, hey, hey

Rudeboys on the come up

OGs washed up, tryna keep up

Nine night long prayers

Then cheers, through tears

Made to my thirties, I am lucky, I am God-blessed

You know what I'm saying

If like me you grew up on ends

Tryna find a way out is like tryna find the Ark of the Covenant

Thanks to the government

Grew up on Majors and Blairs and Browns and Camerons

Under surveillance and under cameras

Police used to pull us over guns drawn

At 17 and harass us

They never saw kids

They saw our blackness

From the moment we're born the odds are stacked as high as the Shard

To reach the same level work twice as hard

From kidulthood to adulthood life is marred

Pull 'em up, they say that you're pulling a card

Spinning their lies on us

Stereotyping, disenfranchising us

Marginalizing, then you're chastising us

Macpherson proved they're criminalizing us

You are what you see and you see how the world sees you

It's a cold world, don't let it freeze you

Key is educate yourself and it frees you

Look, some will find a way to do it legal

Others shooting in the snow like Alejandro Iñárritu

We took lemons, made lemonade

We took our demons, then demonstrated

It's still fuck the police

Mr. Mark Duggan, may you rest in peace

Mr. Stephen Lawrence, may you rest in peace

God bless the dead, God bless the deceased

Whether they died at the hands of police

Or whether they died, lost their lives to the streets

Could You Be Loved, I got that on repeat

I Reni Eddo-Lodge any shackles on me