Fire

[Intro]
If I had my way little children (If I had my way)
I'd tear that building down
If I had my way
If I had my way little children
If I had my way
I'd tear the building down

[Chorus: Vernon Caraway]
If I had my way
If I had my way
If I had my way
I’d tear the building down
If I had my way
If I had my way
If I had my way
I'd tear the building down, down
Tear the building down
I’d tear the building down

[Verse 1: Micah Bournes]
Lemme hit you wit a riddle
If a school get cheddar from the neighborhood tax
And the neighborhood po'
Guess who get a better education
Privileged or the youth from the ghetto
If I had my way as a young kid
Creativity woulda never been elective
Everybody paint
Everybody poetry
Everybody take design and photography
Home economics, Hip Hop history
How to make a supa dupa stupid hot beat
Everybody drama, Everybody yoga
Everybody meditate until the class over
Everybody plants a community garden
Everybody talks to a therapist often
Everybody got teachers that look like them
Everybody reads authors of colorful skin
Ain't nobody gotta pass standardized test
'Cause they prejudice and never measure
Our intelligence
Only our ability to follow the assimilation
Try to tell us if we didn't then we'll never make it
Kids like me feelin' stupid
When the truth is
I could spit so hard
Not gettin' into Harvard
But I got a lot to offer
Set flame to my report card
If I had my way I'd bulldoze a tank
Straight over the schoolhouse gate
Ms. Frizzle wit' the bus
Everybody load up
Every day is a field-trip day

[Chorus: Vernon Caraway]
If I had my way
If I had my way
If I had my way
I’d tear the building down, down
Tear the building down
I’d tear the building down

[Verse 2: Micah Bournes]
No one with a chemical addiction
Need to be in prison
Just because they caught
With the drug they are dependent
Punishing the sickly (whoa)
Callin' it a justice system (nope)
If you got a mental health condition
You don't need conviction
You deserve some medical attention
Shout out to the Critical Resistance
Fighting for the demolition of the prison business
Rich men makin' big bank
Off of inmates who workin' for slave wage
Judges and the cops is playin' the same game
The more that they lock up
The more that they get paid
Black man gettin' more time
Than a white man who commit
The exact same crime
Black man reachin' for his I.D. dies
White man take a dozen children's lives
Still somehow they arrest him alive
Unreal how they don't even conceal their bias
Killin' black folk like a roach or fly
Protect and serve is a joke and a lie
Skurrd for my life when they flash them lights
If I had my way every cop get fired
Every prison replaced with a safe space
For the addicts and the violent to rehabilitate
Penitentiary a deceptive name
Put you in a cage make you more humane?
If I had my way I would tear this thing
Right down to its racist roots
Put ya picks to the fro and ya boots to flo'
And ya fist to the baby blue
It's the New Jim Crow
But the same Negroes
And we still bout that revolu-!

[Chorus: Vernon Caraway]
If I had my way
If I had my way
If I had my way
I’d tear the building down, down
Tear the building down
I’d tear the building down

[Verse 3: Micah Bournes]
Stubborn hope but you know I don't be runnin' from truth
Young black boy everybody gunnin' for you
Yeah I'm preachin' to the choir 'cause you livin' it too
Piss poor education in a crumbling school
State of the art prison waitin' to get full
Of bodies with dark pigment they claimin' it's just law
And order but percentage of
Brothas incarcerated severely exaggerated
Compared to our population
I'm impatient and sick of the hatred
Make it into college they try to assimilate ya
Only black boy on my dorm room floor
What I come here for? Now I'm really unsure
Every level up, a little more isolated
From the melanated village that it takes to raise me
Woke up like, why am I stressin'
To labor at a table as the token exception
Don't want a blessin' if it's only for me
I'm dismantling the evil of American dreams
Demolition to whatever keep my people in chains
Poverty and ignorance, forget the gradual change
They been sayin' that for centuries and still we remain
On the bottom of the barrel I ain't playin' they games
Tear the house down every time I step on a stage
Set the roof on flame with this African rage

[Chorus: Vernon Caraway]
If I had my way
Everything would be okay
You won't have to die today
If I had my way
No more crying nor
Will there be no pain
If I had my way
It'll never be no war
We ain't gotta play that game
If I had my way
We ain't gotta burn this place
Everybody love my race