Yeah…
This for the forgotten names,
For the ones stolen, chained, and never brought home.
History got layers—
And sometimes the truth hurts.
(Verse 1)
From the shores of Africa, stolen by force,
Packed in the ships, no mercy, no course.
From Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal,
Kings and queens taken, sold behind walls.
Different tribes, different names, all turned to slaves,
Thrown in the fields, worked to early graves.
Cotton and tobacco, sugarcane too,
America got rich off the work we pushed through.
Railroads, farms, White House bricks,
Built by black hands—they forget that quick.
Wall Street roots got slavery ties,
That’s real history, they can’t disguise.
(Hook)
We built America, brick by brick,
Through pain and struggle, through every whip.
From the plantations to the city lights,
We turned oppression into power and fight.
We built America, they can’t erase that,
Our blood in the soil, and that’s straight facts.
From chains to champions, from sorrow to pride,
Black history lives, and it never died.
(Verse 2)
And yeah, that truth cuts deep inside,
Some were sold by kingdoms, some were denied.
Tribes at war, people traded for gold,
That chapter of history gotta be told.
Some looked away, some played the game,
European ships came, but they needed names.
Not every hand was foreign on that shore,
Some of our own opened slavery’s door.
And when we cried across the sea at night,
No armies came, no ships in sight.
No rescue sails cutting through the rain,
Just chains, just silence, just inherited pain.
So we stopped waiting for somebody to save,
Built our own future from the life they gave.
Turned broken roots into family trees,
Built strength from suffering, dignity from knees.
(Hook)
We built America, brick by brick,
Through pain and struggle, through every whip.
From the plantations to the city lights,
We turned oppression into power and fight.
We built America, they can’t erase that,
Our blood in the soil, and that’s straight facts.
From chains to champions, from sorrow to pride,
Black history lives, and it never died.
(Verse 3)
After slavery ended, they changed the game,
Jim Crow laws, same hate, different name.
No land, no justice, no fair start,
Still we kept building with a lion’s heart.
Rosa Parks sat down so we all could stand,
Martin Luther King Jr. marched peace across this land.
Malcolm X brought fire, truth, and pride,
Harriet Tubman led freedom in the dead of night.
Tulsa race massacre tried to bury our rise,
Still we came back with the same strong eyes.
Made jazz, blues, gospel, soul,
Hip-hop gave the world our story untold.
(Outro)
Africa in the blood, America in the soul,
A painful history that made us whole.
We stopped waiting, we built our flame,
Black American pride—
We gave ourselves that name.
