Bitter Medicine

[Verse 1]
Boardrooms full of smiling teeth
Thick gold rings
Dead glass eyes
Paper in their pockets
Blood on their sleeves
And they swear it’s all “for our lives”
They poison what we plant and pour
Wrap it up in spotless white
Sell the cure in a child-safe door
Say “just take two
You’ll sleep tonight”
[Chorus]
Bitter medicine
Drip it in our water
In our heads
In our veins
Bitter medicine
They’re counting every dollar that they make from our pain
You can chain my hands
But you won’t cage my mind this time
Bitter medicine
Spit it out
Spit it out
I won’t swallow the lie
[Verse 2]
Screens glow blue
They tuck us in
Feed us fear till we can't stand
Tear the roots from the soil we’re in
Call it progress
Call it “the plan”
They hide their crimes in legal ink
Buried deep in quiet law
Turn the volume up so we don’t think
While they feed on what we love
[Chorus]
Bitter medicine
Drip it in our water
In our heads
In our veins
Bitter medicine
They’re counting every dollar that they make from our pain
You can chain my hands
But you won’t cage my mind this time
Bitter medicine
Spit it out
Spit it out
I won’t swallow the lie
[Bridge]
I see the cracks in your perfect mask (hey!)
Hear the truth in the backroom laugh
Every secret city built on ash
Falls when the quiet start to ask
We’re waking up from the velvet sleep
Every voice you buried starts to speak
You taught us fear
Now we teach heat
You taught us kneel
Now we stand in the street
[Chorus]
Bitter medicine
Drip it in our water
In our heads
In our veins
Bitter medicine
They’re counting every dollar that they make from our pain
You can chain my hands
But you won’t cage my mind this time
Bitter medicine
Spit it out
Spit it out
I won’t swallow the lie

Dark, tense rock-rap hybrid over distorted bass and tight drums; verses spoken with cold urgency, chorus shouted with gang-vocal layers. Sparse piano stabs in the verses, guitars swell into the hook. Male vocals, gritty and close-mic’d, with a rising energy arc that crests into a final, defiant chorus and cuts off on a held vocal note., world, deep