Oscar Grant: Life Matters

[Tyler Black]

It's New Year's Eve, rolling outta bed ready to clear the breeze,
no more fear of police, my head is steady and I'm here for my family.
My girl and daughter, smiling with love; making my world stronger,
gotta work for honor, wilding with drugs isn't gonna endure much longer.
Live the straight and narrow, anymore prison and I'll break in peril,
feel like I've played with arrows in a storm, wrists in chains and sterile.
I've made decisions and mistakes, but it's time I've listened and changed,
for those I live with and praise, because life within minutes can fade.
Tonight is a clean slate, this new year will give birth to a free saint,
I need grace, because at this rate soon I'll slip into a cemetery grave.
We stop by my moms for dinner, her birthday and all I've got is love to give her,
then we drop my baby off at the sitter, tell her it's okay because God is with her.
Meet the gang for celebration, nothing better than time with great relations,
take the train through Fruitvale station, can't drink and drive so we played it safe then.

"10! 9! 8! 7! 6! 5! 4! 3! 2! 1! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!"

Something catches my attention... a punk I fought while I was trapped in prison,
tried to pass him without collision, but he punched my jaw and attacked with intention.
My homies pulled me back and he ran away knowing they'd only shoot his ass,
the old me would've pulled the gat but change is controlling the fuse and match.
We left the train but noticed the police, my chest caved in and we hoped it'd seize,
they pressed our gang and rolled with speed, it's no game face down on cold concrete.
Bunch of racist boys in blue, something tells me corruption destroyed the truth,
I try to avoid the noose... but nothing spells justice like a poisonous ruse.
Protecting my friends, the officers laid me face down on the aggressing cement,
rejecting their demands, that's how I paid with the sound of my suppressing end.
I tried to be a better man, but life is a fight and denied me a measure of chance,
twenty two and never danced with my wife, hope she knows I'll hold her hand forever and;
to those taken long before their time, you're a symbol for what's wrong and right,
we've taken the law into the afterlife... the principles of God and mankind.
Spent a long time trying to climb ladders, proving those we love that life matters,
and even when our demise scatters... the world continues to divide after.

Oscar Grant III was fatally shot by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California, United States, in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2009. Grant turned out to be unarmed; he was pronounced dead the next morning at Highland Hospital in Oakland.

Johannes was sentenced to only three years... he was released in eleven months.