I don't know much about reparations,

but I do know Haiti had to pay France a billion in retribution.

They found out that freedom be expensive,
like breaking out of bondage could leave you broke
while the white world applauded.

Western world called it righteous,
the way pale hands could penny-pinch
a cotton-picking nigga's slip into a slave pocket
and pull out a dollar.

Uncle Sam, a pimp made proper,
trading bodies like playing cards.

Only a joker could beg for reparations,
but a tax break?
Just another ace up his sleeve.

I see compensation been the standard
for everybody except us.

Buying a Black man
was the best investment America ever made.

I mean, in D.C.,
Massa got a check
just for freeing his slaves,
got a slice of the American pie
with a side of pension
they don't mention.

Our country can afford to pay you
for losing a slave,
just not for being one.

We can pay the murderer,
but blame the victim.

Trump spent $25 million bombing Iran
and $40 million on a birthday parade
nobody attended.

$10.8 billion on the NYPD last year,

yet they claim our country can't afford
the cost of reparations,

like Trump's chump change
couldn't change a nigga's life.

And in the background of this poem,

there's a Black baby
about to be evicted from their bassinet.

And I have to wonder
if white America can hear them crying,

or if it's too hard
over the sound of tax dollars
breaking like bombs
we didn't know about.

And I beg this country for nothing,

but I do expect
what I am owed.

And I am owed
a lot more than forty acres and a mule.

The American pie
was basted in Black blood,

so what the fuck we look like
starving
just to get a slice?