Editors' note: Richard Wallace, also known as EPIC of the Chicago hip-hop group BBU, released his first solo album last month. Entitled #OPRAH, the title is actually an acronym: "Ordinary People Recording American History." It is, as the Chicago Reader's Leor Galil puts it, "a continuation of Chuck D's comment, but it's also an allusion to rap's current position, wherein recording equipment has become increasingly cheaper and more people have access to tools that allow them to document and share their experiences on some of the most popular websites out there." This track, "Letter to My Father," ties the political with the personal. Wallace's father died in prison, and the racist toll of the prison industrial complex and the injustice system are hardly news to anyone paying attention.
Lyrics
Take me away
Take me away
To brighter days
Take me away
Take me away
To where my father is living
Far from the prion system that pimped him Daley’s hit men
hit men until they bent men
Something gotta change
Call me different distance distorted
Son and daughter’s aborted
And water boarded
To save fortunes
The porridge is running thing again
And the wolfs is at the door
The boy cried wolfs
till the the village called him a whore
They took his voice and gave him sores took his hands and gave him sword
Stole his soul and gave him lord
I feel like war is eminent
When you murder the innocent
There no repentance
The life Trayvon
Hearts dropped like a bombs
while the world yelled stay calm
The church said pray for him
What happened to prophets speak the passion of the people
Speak!!
Cause we need you
Not the money that leads you
This is an open call to any militant
That gives a shit
I’ll load a clip and die for this
I seen my mother cry for this
Look into her eye and whisper
Change gone come, because it has to
You dream might out last you
But they are in line with what your past drew.
And you drew Picasso’s momma
I’m from where the red fern grows
Stood on hot coals for the souls of Black folk
I wrote this for cottage grove
GD’s BD’s and solid 4’s Vice Lords Black Stones and many more
They will unite till when this war
You by pass them as some thugs but i see them as our core
Intellectuals be the arm but the goons will be our sword
War on bastards that want to out last us
Word from the spook who sat by the door and learned master
Wasn’t faster more intelligent
Or or better fit then he was
We don’t need them but they need us
So drugs and dreams is what the feed us
Keep us sick and waiting for Jesus
To resurrect and kick his feet up
Well Jesus what are you waiting for?
Waiting on you so long we knocking on Satan’s door.
Like he ain’t picking up or he ain’t picking us.
Richard Wallace a.k.a. EPIC is a community activist, writer and lyricist in Chicago. He is a member of acclaimed hip-hop group BBU and is a co-founder of the Future of Benin Project.