I Stand Alone (feat. Common & Patrick Stump)

Sometimes we feel alone

But alone ain't always wrong

Yeah

Alone in a crowded room

My mind made up like a powder room

I'm the sun, giving the clouds some room

I shine, shine like the hour noon

Tune is to stay in step with every day men

And women, the rhythm of the realness

Still I'm Legend like Will Smith

In the presence of the fake I am a real gift

Open it, hopin' it'd be something dope in it

Movement of the people getting motion sick

We ride on the high and lows of it

On the Southside, we got hosed for it

Standing up like Rich Pryor

We get fire and inspire 'bout a prospect to get higher

Your sire on the throne grew up around the stones

The ranger, so I stand alone

I'm flying high up in the sky

I will not run, I will not hide

I stand alone, I stand alone

The only test is to survive

I will succeed I will not die

I stand alone, I stand alone

I stand alone, I stand alone

Success it is, we blessed to live

Not just my kids, want the best for his

Progression lives where the lessons is

I got my own, God bless the kid

In the mid part of Babylon listening to Farrakhan

In the parks of Avalon Streets we would battle on

Got the good book in my carry-on

Life is a race, I'm the marathon

Man on the moon,give the boy some room

Rose from the concrete, told you I would bloom

Situation brought out the hero

A little black thirteen year old

The voice of the Lord in my earlobe

Telling me my purpose, I can see it clearer-oh

Revolution in the execution of lyrics

Spirit of Gil Scott, Marvin Gaye, modern day

I pray

I'm flying high up in the sky

I will not run, I will not hide

I stand alone, I stand alone

I stand alone, I stand alone

The only test is to survive

I will succeed I will not die

I stand alone, I stand alone

I stand alone, I stand alone

I'm flying high up in the sky

I will not run, I will not hide

I stand alone, I stand alone

I stand alone, I stand alone

The only test is to survive

I will succeed I will not die

I stand alone, I stand alone

I stand alone, I stand alone

The irresistible appeal of black individuality

Where has all of that gone?

The very people who blazed our path to self-expression

And pioneered a resolutely distinct and individual voice

Have too often succumbed to mind numbing sameness

And been seduced by simply repeating what we hear

What somebody else said, or thought

And not digging deep to learn what we think, or what we feel

Or what we believe

Now, it is true that the genius of African culture is surely it's repetition

But the key to such repetition

Was that new elements were added each go-round

Every round goes higher, and higher

Something fresh popped off the page, or jumped from a rhythm

That had been recycled

Through the imagination of a writer, or a musician

Each new installation bore the imprint

Of our unquenchable thirst to say something of our own

In our own way, in our own voice, as best we could

The trends of the time be damned

Thank god we still got musician's, and thinkers

Whom's obsession with excellence

And who's hunger for greatness

Remind us that we should all be unsatisfied

With mimicking the popular

Rather than mining the brittle veins of creativity

That God placed deep inside each of us

I stand alone like ranger