KYDD JONES/KUTX
This past July NPR Music stations, including KUTX, reached out to artists for performances of their songs that will add to the national discussion of race and equality. We believe music has the power to bring us together and make help make positive changes in our communities. Check out all Songs for Change submissions below.
Kydd Jones: Vocals; Bomani Ray Barton, Guitar – Captured from a safe distance by Michael Minasi at Rosewood Park July 2020
Inspired by the American civil rights protest of 2020, ATX songwriter, rapper, and producer Kydd Jones performs a set of two recently released singles “Rubber Bullets” and “Goblin” and the unreleased “James Baldwin” at Rosewood Park. Read more about the Northeast Austin Park and it’s place in Austin’s racial segregation history here.
Kydd Jones
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Rubber Bullets by Kydd Jones
Don’t shoot me down
I’m on solid ground
And I can’t breathe
With you on top of me
Who care no one listening
You hate it here but you love it
You over visiting
Who’s knocking at my door
No soliciting
Christian Dior at the christening
Lost my religion still fitting in
Holy grails on my kit just to kick it in
Thinking you good then you Consequence no coincidence
Nigga you guilty till proven innocent
My niggas catchin’ sentences for being black with blemishes
So we reenact the images of the Watts riots, cause we are past remembering
They killin’ us like we are fast forgetting
Tried to protest, had to be cheetah fast for sprinting
Rubber bullets speeding past with ignorance
Racist ass you ain’t have a hint you is
Don’t shoot me down
I’m on solid ground
I can’t breathe
With you on top of me
Goblin by Kydd Jones
Y’all wanna be civil or want civil war?
I feel like George Floyd when I feel the floor
If they don’t kill us all they gone kill some more
Treat it like picking straws
Nigga shit is short
Who wanna be BLACK in America?
The dying breed
The oldest people science see
My sign read
Get off my neck I can’t breathe
Mother got too many sons
At night she can’t sleep!
Quarantine in my quarters
Got me thinking outside a
Foreign scene in these borders
Death numbers double like chorus
Couldn’t make this up in Sephora
So I rig it up, and record it to rigor mortis
Nigga big it up, ‘cuz big wood like sequoias
How you fools boo when it’s for us?
Get money – still and average joe in a fedora
Man, I’m the biggest spill in the thesaurus
My niggas real, darker than seal, will kill a walrus
Every time I count it feel you euphoric
I had to count you out, did feel you for it?
How Ima give you the wheel and steer you towards it
Niggas ready to squeal couldn’t hold it in like a corset
The stimulus didn’t stimulate her situation
You really gotten thick in yo incubation
James Baldwin by Kydd Jones
Mind state in a state of mine with no state of mine
Fuck all them
Crime pays why wait in line
Why wait in line
Why you stalling
They thought they knew me
CDG hearts on my sleeve
I hit Lil bih she starting tweaking
None was felt
My lil dog he say them streets made him
Something else
I been running out of friends n
Treat this like this was the end
The only only summer
I had to manifest my dreams
Where were you
Didn’t even have the strength
Didn’t even need no friends
It was all me in the end
I was way too lost in space to jot it down
People around the town they say his shot is gone
Hate to stir the pot and then reopen wounds
We open soon
More light
In foresight
In store fronts
Another cloudy night
Who knew I’d tour this soon
I could afford the shoes
But yo the mortgage due!
Musicians: Kydd Jones: Words, Vocals; Guitar: Bomani Ray Barton
Credits: Cameras: Michael Minasi; Edit: Michael Minasi; Audio Mix: Jake Perlman; Producer: Deidre Gott
Songs for Change featuring Kydd Jones, The Dears, Fantastic Negrito and more on NPR Music Live Sessions
