Akala feat. Lowkey Lyrics
"Behind My Painted Smile"

Behind my painted smile
When all the revolutionary noise is nothing but a lost little boy
Confused and insecure, arrogant and oversure
An egotistical prick so come on please praise me more
It's great that my music bettered you
But I contemplate murder every day so don't put me on a pedestal
Plus truly, just the vehicle the music just runs through me
In my better moments I could let the universe use me

Behind my smile there's generations of pain
Self-hatred, ingrained miseducated my brain
Decimated the place where my dead relations were slain
Not just physically but mentally penetrated our veins
What you got inside hasn't gotta die once
It can die a lot of times, that I promise my son
Analyse every song that I've done
Tryna fight colonialism with a colonised tongue

Here I stand again
Living in sin
Caught up, in the dream
Behind the painted smile

Behind my painted smile is the most painful grimace
This mental prison I live in cause I am so conditioned
By my privilege, what a strange contradiction
To grow up brown in Britain and know that your living
Was paid for by a carcass that resembles yours
Born in the heart of the empire
You're worth more than I was just like you
But less then the native ones
Raised by my mum but in this world I am a father's son

Behind my painted smile, a very flawed human being
Done many things that I regret and never knew the reason
What do you believe in, truth or freedom or are you deceiving?
I don't wanna die in prostration to European's
They say the answer is within you and nowhere else
Understand the vision man on a mission to know himself
This is for my co-defendants no retreat and no surrender
You probably think that we don't remember Ota Benga

Here I stand again
Living in sin
Caught up, in the dream
Behind the painted smile

The smile is painted on my face is tainted by a frown
Picture in the pocket's of blood that decorate the town
Trigger jum bullets sung and guns hum
Then everyone that's dead was somebody's someone

Behind my painted smile I feel like a naked child
Maybe rapping ain't for now cos my passion is fading out
Up early though I search and roam along this dirty road
Just another traveller taking a long journey home

All this talk of intervention to protect on what is the intention
Same as it ever was the colonial past and present
And more respect for most of the right wingers
Than the paternalistic patronizing liberal bigot

Our way of life is so divine, we should intervene
Select war and export the British dream
Behind cinema screens there's much that isn't seen
George Clooney war movies never bring our children peace

Yo fam, you ever wake up and just feel like fucking off
And never coming back to this place and just cutting off?
All the time, almost did last year
The trouble was the bloody cops had me running in and out the bloody dock
I been there brother, though I don't promote it in this rap shit
I ain't a stranger to having my back on their blue plastic
Can't keep us captive
We see the tactics
To keep us passive
We beat the fascists
Release the classics
And reach the masses!

Here I stand again
Living in sin
Caught up, in the dream
Behind the painted smile

Here I stand again
Living in sin
Caught up, in the dream
Behind the painted smile