Strange Fruit

Nina:
Here is a fruit
Here is a fruit
Here is a fruit
Here is a fruit
Black, black breeze, breeze
Black, black breeze, breeze

Verse 1:
Now I don’t think my generation can really comprehend
All the problems that we face from way back when
Mama Billie sang it, Aunt Nina reiterated
And now in the form of rap I must illustrate it
Picture the South somewhere around the ‘40s
Before these gold-toothed rappers and they forties
Before all the crunk
When racists were racists and wouldn’t even front
With hatred would chase you and put you in the trunk
Sedate you or wake you and whip you with a gun
You wish you wouldn’t run but your ankle’s broken
[?] of the meat that the bone exposes
Fun they pokin’, you hoping Christ sees
The crises all you see is white sheets
‘Get up, n*gga’ they force you to get up
Pourin’ urine in your face ’til you spit up
Lashes with branches, your skin ripped up
And it cuts deep the ghost you about to give up
The time is up another pickup pull up full of more Klan figures
You are not to expect this type of assault
Forty minutes ago you was just taking a walk
Now you go from being a black man to coon
The seed of strange fruit will be planted soon

Chorus (Greg Soundz):
Southern trees bare strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
They live for you, they die for you
They bled for you, yeah so have you
May we never no never forget what they did
We won’t forget, we can’t forget, we won’t forget

Verse 2:
Today you will be like Jesus
Lynched by the cold hearted just like he was
Innocent, guiltless just like he was
You can only pray in your plight he sees ya
Close to a seizure, tryna breathe but it’s painful
Shameful the rich just crush and mangle
The angel’s supposed to be here for you
But it seems like they ain’t even hearing you
(Greg Soundz: forgiver[?])
Father forgive them
It took a negro Christ to die for the system
They continue to kick them with belts they whipped him
But he can’t die lonely if God is with him
Now they blab the scriptures, are rather twisted
This text on the Christ they had to have missed it
‘cause they repeat history and make us god
As they shackle our arms, legs is tied
And the great facade is they power-trip
Like they got the real power, now how is this?
When they resurrect later through the voice of Billie
Several decades again through your boy O’hene
As he steps on the table and wears the rope
Looking at his accuser with glares of hope
Even though the blood makes him a different image
He looks up to the sky and says, ‘it is finished’

(*group reciting the Lord’s Prayer*)