ALBUMS & Singles
Whatever it is,
the way we tell our stories make all the difference.
Hear these POWERFUL stories.
LYRICS
This Ain’t Nothin New
Verse 1
Promised it was over / Gone like super nova / How could I know the / Facts to lies they wrote ta / Actualize they quota / I’d had to be wit / strong is the odor with this one / Ya racism stinks / Vapors worse than yola / Co-optin our movement / Pepsi to CocaCola / Commercializin us / Oppression is a Joke ta / At least Heath Ledger / Had the nerve to role up / They education bust / Fable like Hansel Gretel / Gimmick like Toys R Us / Been sippin from the ladle / While Texas wrote the books / Labeled Africans migrants / Devised to silence crimes / Of Holocaust violence / To justify enslavement / Lay the foundation / Of our continued subordination / To white dominatrix / And claim our people’s gains been / Moral handouts from white saviors / Fallacious //
Chorus
That right there / This right chear / Lets get clear / Ain’t nothin new to us / (Nothin nothin new / Ain’t nothin, nothin new //
Verse 2
Some of the laws changed / Constitutional range / Suffrage, enslavement / Jim Crow, Roe v Wade / But been 150 years / Brothas still in chains / Slave patrols still at it / Genocide still happens / Segregation outlawed / But the ghetto still crackin / And the U.S. prisons / Are full of Brown and Black men / Women got the right to vote / But not to say what happens / Within their own bodies / Consistency we lack in / Voting rights act was regal / Made being black illegal / Disenfranchise the people / A move that proved lethal / With mass incarceration / Swept across the nation / What began with the Reagans / 2.5 million cages / And that’s outrageous / Just sayin it / They playin wit our lives / Gettin paid wit it / But they values ain’t hard to spot G / Cuz they with the ownership of bodies //
Chorus
That right there / This right chear / Lets get clear / Ain’t nothin new to us / Nothin nothin new / Ain’t nothin, nothin new //
Verse 3
None of this is new to us / The Pigs been killin us / Without repercussions / Since before Frederick Douglass / White citizens councils / Tea Party Republicans / Oath Keepers & 3 Percenters / Stem from the Ku Klux Klans / Ain’t nothin new about this / All they did was re-brand / CCA to CoreCivic / But that shit is just as bad / They stole all our leaders / Brain washed us repeated / Post racial, color blind / They work nearly completed / So many of us thinkin / That we deserve this treatment / That we’d take a stop and frisk / With hardly even blinkin / Sound like Black Codes to me / Back to vagrancy laws / “Stand your ground,” a burnin cross / Michael Brown to Dred Scott / Wounded Knee to Standing Rock / Rodney King and Tu Pac / Now BLM a terrorist / Like Black Panther Self-Defense / Ain’t nothin new about this / This country’s just racist //
Chorus
That right there / This right chear / Lets get clear / Ain’t nothin new to us / Nothin nothin new / Ain’t nothin, nothin new //
“Into the Struggle”
by
Renaissance the Poet
Renaissance the Poet, a seasoned emcee and spoken word artist, who also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History and a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of Washington, and who has also been a Black Lives Matter activist since the execution of Michael Brown in 2014, published an album fusing all of these elements together.
It is a powerful work of art, cleverly woven together to tell an incredible story of struggle by a people “sick and tired of being sick and tired” (Fannie Lou Hamer). It seamlessly streams together philosophy, morality, ethics, history, lived experience, contemporary issues and that out the gutter, underground Hip Hop classic emotion of RAWNESS, ANGER & PASSION.
Renaissance has often been likened unto Chuck D of Public Enemy and Immortal Technique, two phenomenal artist of extreme intelligence who focus on contemporary, historic and intergenerational trauma through the artistic expressions within their music.
“Into the Struggle” is a must hear that will most likely remain relevant for quite some time to come. If anything is clear from the album, and Renaissance’s participation in the Movement for Black Lives is that this is not a new struggle and that change takes a long time. That is what Renaissance did not name the album, “The Struggle is Over.” This is not a moment, but a movement. It is not a sprint, but a marathon. Renaissance concludes the album with a continued call to action because there is still so much work yet to be done.