Journal

three days after third quarter
november 19, 2003 ~ 1:32 p.m.

I first read about Sarah Jones in Bust a while back, and promptly downloaded her song "Your Revolution", which is a scathing criticism of the sexism in hip-hop. Now she's got a new song, "Whose War?", which is really fucking amazing (and can be downloaded here). I couldn't find the lyrics to this song anywhere on the net, so here's my attempt at a transcription:

Whose war is this? Whose war is this?
The war is theirs, the war is theirs,
A war with corporate ties
Whose war is this?
The war is theirs, the war is theirs
Until George Bush resigns
Whose war is this?
The war is theirs, the war is theirs
For people on the line
Whose war is this?
The war is theirs, the war is theirs,
Not ours, not yours, not mine

As a little girl Halloween couldn't scare me
With devils or villains or vampire imposters
'Cause good ole cowboy Ronald Reagan
He was more nightmarish than any monster
Much more bone chilling than the sight of blood
Was the ketchup ghetto school kids got as vegetables
They spread the myth that a couple of hard won civil rights
Had overnight turned all us coloreds into Huxtables
Haunted houses didn't faze me
But the White House kept me fixed in its gaze
We little girls were to stay in our places
And make up our faces and watch boys wage wars
And bust up homeostasis in outer spaces
Goblins and hellfire couldn't throw me
'Cause I knew eternal burning wasn't below me
It was up the street in nuclear waste dumps
And landfills they sanctioned from their spot
On the Hill where the punishment is capital
You said it Gil, it was their war then
And now it's truer still

Whose war, whose war is this?
The war is theirs, the war is theirs
For oil and more pipelines
Whose war is this?
The war is theirs, the war is theirs
Destruction by design

By the time I was a young teen
Things wasn't gettin no better
Joining the army was just a way to not stay broke forever
Cops started usin brown folks for bullet testers
Protesting is how I had spent my last semester
Against U.S.-supported aparteid
Using the taxes they had chewed out of my parents' behinds
Government telling us "be patriotic, never complain,"
As they're propping up oppression of women in Bahrain
We should all sing Merry Christmas as they're bombing Iraq
Sacrifice innocent life and sing Jingle Bell Rock, Peace on Earth
At home they target the poor with cutbacks
Fill our heads with yuletide pipedreams, confuse and distract
Happy Kwanzaa festivals for all the progress being made
In the movies, Whoopi and J. Lo, they get to play maids
In real life they'd be the ones to have to fly fighter planes
In a war against their sisters, fellow pawns in the game

Whose war, whose war is this?
The war is theirs, the war is theirs
A war with corporate ties,
Whose war is this?
The war is theirs, the war is theirs,
The news monopolize
Whose war is this?
The war is theirs, the war is theirs,
Resources privatized
Whose war is this?
The war is theirs, the war is theirs,
Their history, full of lies

Now it's more than ten years later
You want my definition of a hater?
Look under W, it stands for war instigator
Convenient battles picked for revenge for his dad
This thief who never learned to pronounce nepotism as a lad
A clueless jerk who proudly smirks that he's an ivy grad
But knows next to nothing
If he knew history he'd see peace movements ain't bluffing
If his administration had two drops of common sense
They'd pay closer attention to current events than fake holidays
They'd know Columbus Day and this whole land
Belongs to indigenous people and a woman and a man
Still ain't treated equal nowhere on this earth
And no W should decide when, where, or whether we have to give birth
Not when that executioner can't even spell what a human life is worth
They'd know people of every race and religion can see right through this war
No more divide and conquer and divide some more

Whose war, whose war, whose war is this?
I want a president to represent me
Say what?
I want a president to represent me
Say what?
I want a president to represent me
Say what?
I want a real president to represent me

Whose war is this, whose war is this?
The war is theirs, the war is theirs, it's theirs.

previous ~ next

Diaryland