Don't Give Up - Gil Scott-Heron

I never really thought of myself as a complex man

Or as someone who was really that hard to understand

But it would hardly take a genius to realize

That I’ve always been a lot too arrogant and a little too f$%kin' wise

That was a combination that made folks feel duty bound

To do whatever they could to try and shoot me down

To head off some of the things I might possibly say

And see if they couldn’t take some of my pride away

To bring me disappointment and teach me to fear it

Obviously these are folks that just didn’t have no spirit

Spirits say

Don’t give up (spirits say don’t give up)

Yes it’s time to stop your fallin'

You’ve been down long enough

Can’t you hear the spirits callin'

Yes it’s the spirits

Can’t you hear iiiiiit

Callin' your name x 2

Yeah talkin' bout spiriiiiiiiiiiits heh

There are people whose lives are so far of the track

That what they like best about life is stabbing' brothers in the back

And I was obviously too blind and probably too weak

To see who was responsible for my losing streak

The best way to explain it is to say simply because

I was looking around outside and the truth is I was

The one.

So I got locked into all of the analysis

And found myself locked into a kind of paralysis

And something was calling and I almost didn’t hear it

But I spent a lot of time being blessed by the spirits

They keep saying

I didn’t matter if it was a child or and adult

There was absolutely no-one that I could not insult

So that I could isolate myself somewhere off to the side

And continue to juggle all the possible whys

The warmth I wanted to generate so well

Had turned into a frozen hell

And the discouraging injustices I felt

Had pinned me somewhere inside a drug infested cell

Where those who told didn’t know and those who knew didn’t tell

And «I could continue to feel sorry for my self»

And then I heard

Ain’t no way overnight to turn your life around

And this ain’t the conversation of someone that never falls back down

But no matter how long you’ve been on trial

With the days and weeks of self denial

And no matter how many times you’ve tried to make it

And found out that right then you just couldn’t take it

If you are looking for a looser who found strength and success

Remember the spirit of Brother Malcolm X

And know that you can leave all your mistakes behind

The day that you «really make up your mind»

Come on brother… come on up

Stand on up and say…