Get all 8 Timothy Welbeck releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of The Cost of Living, Living Wage, Nobody feat. Tomeka Carroll & Domonique Wilson (single), Life is Beautiful feat. Tomeka Carroll (single), Southern Comfort (Hue I Am) feat. Lisa McClendon (single), Shades of Grace, Have Plenty feat. Tomeka Carroll (single), and Paint the Town Red.
1. |
A Place to Call Home
04:21
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“Dad, when you lived in Ghana, did lions try to eat you?”/I asked my father as a child who was naive to/How myths become fodder for what we perceive true/I got caught by Bugs Bunny; he deceived me too/I asked again, unsure if he had heard me/“No,” is how he would respond tersely/“Like you, I’ve only seen them in zoos, don’t think absurd things/I’ve uprooted the truth of what he was unearthing/Go back and fetch the ancestors’ chirping/Or when you hatch you’ll only know the songs the caged bird sings/“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness”/Thinking the space behind bars is the only place they’ll live/And will go to the grave afraid the skill set isn’t within them/When they could have flown away, but no one revealed it/That’s why I have come to love a place I am of but not from/A native tongue under a native sun raised among/The tension lying/Of life inside the hyphen/African and American aligning/Two souls colliding/Two abodes to reside in/Two warring ideals defining who I am/And all that’s on my mind is the time when I was inquiring of my father’s time spent with lions/And how the place I call home taught me to hate my skin/To hate its origins and to hate my kin/Between the amber heights of grain you’ll see the plight so plain/Saying She’s beautiful, but blemishes remain/When our women are swallowed in all of Her promise of change/And you won’t see justice if you have Breonna for a name/Or consider when George’s eulogy was delivered/The McMichaels told a judge they killed Ahmaud because he was a nigger/Aggrieved and embittered we’re told to hold this hurt inward/Because if we lose our temper they will turn our homes into embers/I mean Jacob was shot for a weapon they thought he had hidden/Kyle got off after they watch him shoot and kill men/Jake may never walk again/Kyle may never walk into prison/That’s a metaphor for the awfulness we live in/They shoot us—they’re blameless/We rebuke this stuff—we’re brainless/What are my people to do/What are we to deduce/With this evil on the loose/That want to keep on the noose/I’m just praying Jesus keeps His hand on the wheel/Because it all of this makes a man want to go and handle the steel/But I still fear a fate of ending up like Philando Castile/It makes you wanna holler, throw your hands up for real/That’s why we wore the mask long before the virus came/With torn and bleeding hearts we veiled ourselves to hide our pain/America has instilled distrust/She sent soldiers and tanks when we said, “Stop killing us”/She’s fallen woefully short of her promises/When the politics of the cotton gin are in stop and frisk/And some rotten men are profiting from an evil that is bottomless/And if we ponder it you’ll even hear the reverend commenting, “If you pull down the statues ... but not the statutes...then we still have issues.” /We know that’s true/So we want our 40 acres and a mule in this latitude/Until the day we make it home that’ll have to do
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2. |
We Culture feat. Nezi
03:31
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We Culture
Hook
We culture, we the real rock stars/You take what we make, then try to say it’s not ours/We culture, who we are is art/You can imitate, but what’s in our hearts/ We culture, we the real rock stars/You take what we make, then say it’s not ours/But we’re culture, who we are is art/You can imitate, but can’t remake what’s in our hearts/We culture
Verse 1 (Timothy Welbeck)
You love our culture, hate our people/Dub us vulgar, imitate what we do/Lunch on the hors d’oeuvres like it’s the way to feed you/Grinning and sinning while we give you the things you feast to/We taught drums to talk, we hummed and waltzed/Strummed without pause, even when hung and mauled/The chains you gave could constrain our song/When we sang our songs, the world sang along/So when you see these things on TV screens/Your children perceive these themes and believe in we/We see—somewhere in America Miley twerking/We see—under that mascara Kylie’s wants to be a black person/Puckering their lips and shuttering their hips lining their purses while it suited their purpose/But being black adjacent may take you places/You can imitate it, but cannot duplicate it/We culture
Hook
We culture, we the real rock stars/You take what we make, then try to say it’s not ours/But we’re culture, who we are is art/You imitate, but can’t remake what’s in our hearts/ We culture, we the real rock stars/You take what we make, then say it’s not ours/But we’re culture, who we are is art/You can imitate, but can’t remake what’s in our hearts/We culture
Verse 2 (Nezi)
WE WANT WAR TILL ALL THE MAN EQUAL/This our story, I see through y’all sequel/You build walls and seats on our steeple/Still we flower the world with our sepal/Power to the people/Knowledge to the feeble/See our stars are scars with some diesel/Paint a picture/Grab a easel/We the life-source—you the fecal/Far, we are and it’s pretty bizarre/How they still in be in awe/By the new black czars/Kings Queens And finer things/Little kids in the ‘hood/ That can rhyme and sing/They take it, but they don’t it too well/Then they try to dip sets from the real jewels/Our bodies, where they used to throw stones/ Now they in the gym (Jim)/Tryna keep up with the Jones.
Hook
We culture, we the real rock stars/You take what we make, then try to say it’s not ours/But we’re culture, who we are is art/You imitate, but can’t remake what’s in our hearts/ We culture, we the real rock stars/You take what we make, then say it’s not ours/But we’re culture, who we are is art/You can imitate, but can’t remake what’s in our hearts/We culture
Verse 3 (Timothy Welbeck)
Y’all act like a show of fondness prompts approval/But like with the bro Giannis Anteokounpo/We’re known as a freak in every lake, or pond we do go/Wandering as Outkasts like Antwan and Andre do know/So, no you can’t go with bronzer to rock the skin tone/When you can wash off the tan but still harm our kinfolk/So if you pon the replay, know who caused the tempo/Love the artist and the art, it can all be simple/You can’t have our rhythm without our blues/That’s what all of this is amounting to/If you don’t move yo feet, then we don’t eat/What 3 Stacks gone speak is true/But if the only feat is you’ve moved your feat/Please rethink a thing or two before you proceed to sing our tunes/See the people too when they sweep you out your shoes/And while those hips are swaying whenever you play/Remember you can imitate it, but not duplicate it/
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3. |
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Verse (1)
(Yeah, yeah) Reviewing faded pictures from a bloody past/I can smell the hemoglobin from behind the mask/Run my fingers side to side and I can feel the scars (whew)/Turn the news to Channel 9 and I can see the cause (yeah)/From bird’s eye, I can see the flaws (yeah)/A country running off or more than laws/The blood I mention is like motor zal (huh), or is it gasoline(yes)/They change the names up to make it clean (whew)/I think you call it propane/I’m feeling like you’re pro pain/My people invested they blood, sweat, and tears with low gain/You took the little that they had to build more with no shame (no)/Easy to bend the rules when they part of yo game/Easy to break the backs of men when from the beginning is the facts you spin/Mr. Griffith brought the action/The pain of Birth [of a Nation] never left, it’s not back again (ah)/Yeah, that film is still cashing in, cashing in/And that register’s still ringing (still ringing)/Man, them whips are still swing (yes sir)/Whew, them lashes still stinging (ah)/Bird locked in cage for days but still singing/The joy of the Lord is my strength/From the King of all kings I was sent (you know)/I said, “The joy of the Lord is my strength (yes, yes) /But my pain still ask that you to repent/The more things change
(Tomeka Carroll)
The more things change, they stay the same (woah)
Verse 2 (Timothy Welbeck)
(Yeah, yeah) They called my mother’s father, “Carpenter Red”/They said he could build a house from the thoughts he conjured within his head/He had no usage for a blueprint, just a saw and a ledge/A hammer and nails, then architecture started to erect/He could have been an architect instead/But back then black men’s options were marginal at best/So he nailed whatever crawled across his desk/Until he couldn’t, then they put him in a coffin to rest/That forebodes a harbinger I’d suggest/Of the arduous test his life’s distilling/He built tables he never sat at with his wife and his children/Because a home gave him a harder time with building/And the strife that killed him is the plight of millions/The hindsight of 2020 says the virus revealed it/It even shows a sickness ain’t vaccine for/Like the avarice that has bickering back and forth/Or the racism is now lashing forth/Mirrors what held my grandfather back before/Seeing it all will leave you in a state of rage/But everything that is faced cannot be changed/“But nothing can be changed until it is faced”/So let us take a lesson from the sayings of James/Otherwise, the more things change, they’ll stay the same
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4. |
Ask Not
04:47
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Ask Not
Deuteronomy 4:19, 32:4; Psalm 8:1, 9; 15:2, 99:3; 103:1; Isaiah 59:19; Matthew 5:48, Matthew 7:7; John 20:24-29; Romans 8:17;James 4:3
Hook
I was told, “You have not, because you ask not”/Many of the times we have not because we haven’t asked God/We see and we watch/We scheme and we plot/But many of the times we have not because we haven’t asked God
Verse 1
I once had a dream I could walk with God to Heaven/When I awoke, I found it hard to catch Him/It was more than I was lacking in my leg strength/Walking with God requires freedom from transgressions/It requires perfection in your steppin’/No indiscretions in your trekkin’/And because I’m wrestling with trespasses like the next man/I called unto Him and said, “I’ve got a couple of questions”/I said, “Your name is holy; You’re fearful and You’re reverent/ You’re mighty; the whole earth trembles in Your presence/So why does evil exist, How could You let it/When the wicked wield mayhem and bedlam as their weapons/The poor are left to their begging/The sick are weak and battling pestilence/You see and You know, but You are rarely interjecting/And when I was done pressing, He asked me the same questions
Hook
Verse 2
I was told, “You chide others; you tell them they are born in sin/And they must change their ways or they will be destroyed in them/And other faiths, when you aren’t bored with them, or ignoring them/You simply say they are storied whims of abhorrent men/But how are you so sure that your Lord exists/When the Egyptians say what your Lord did is actually Horus did/And others will say the core within your holy scripts of what Horus did are really reinterpreted worship of the solar discs/The moon and the stars, the planets in their orbiting/The ancients distorted it without ever truly knowing it/And would go on to call all they saw in the heavens glorious/And now that we know the truth, that is where the story ends/The arguments are antiquated, but are still fomenting/But you are too focused on your book to even notice it/So how can you say the tenets of your faith or so deep/When the sun of God as the Son of God motif is the foundation of old belief
Hook
Verse 3
We all waltz and careen to the altar of belief/And pause to wed faith for the big and small all to see/Then go to bed with doubt when it is not all what it seems/And then cry from faltering knees when that fault has conceived/There are no alternate means/We are all unfaithful to our call and belief/Even Didymus did insist to grip the imprints within His wrists/And the Lord did visit Him to let him witness it/His love persisted in the midst of his inquisitiveness/Because the spotless Lamb isn’t afraid of a few blemishes/He can handle our questions if we give Him our doubts/Because true faith is knowing we haven’t figured it out
Hook
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5. |
Things Fall Apart
03:59
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Things Fall Apart
Hook
My old church building is now a mosque/I watched some friends untie the knot/My brother no longer believes in God/When things don’t finish the way they start/Some things, they fall apart(repeat)
Verse 1
Some days I drive by the lot to see if the edifice is still there/And find brethren make salat as the call to prayer fills the air/Some lay prostrate to display the reverence of theirs/Neighbors from the block and pedestrians will stare/But those who prayed and fellowshipped with your flock feel embarrassed/Because the structure is the same/But so much of it has changed/Within those four walls you’ll still find folk up in there praying/And before long you know you’ll hear hope proclaimed/But it doesn’t ward off their feelings of being betrayed/Or forestall how staring into those windows still brings some them pain/So as those congregants begin to teem within the vestibule/To be honest, all I could think was how I should have messaged you/And tell you how I heard those you used to shepherd left confused/Seeing another leader doing all of what you’d said you do/And you’ll probably say that’s not how its actually looking/That’s only because the axe will forget the things the tree wouldn’t
Hook
My old church building is now a mosque/I watched two friends untie the knot/My brother no longer believes in God/Things don’t always finish the way they start/What I’m trying to say is some things, they fall apart (repeat)
Verse 2
I still remember the night you met her/The glimmer in your eye as you envisioned a life together/The way your eyes would well up, the moments you would describe/The rumbling of your stomach becoming the fluttering of butterflies/Now she can’t stomach the lies/Or suffer your stubborn pride as she confronts the other woman who has summoned your lustful eyes/Her legs embracing your waist never persuaded you to stay/Now they’re both resigned to questioning the whats, the whys/While you and I are on the line surmising the cause of the divide/My wife is trying to subside the sobbing of your bride/It made me lay in my bed and think about everything/The tying of the knot and its severing/Divorce and child support are words that you hope your friends never speak/Innocence wilting in their children is what you’re hoping you’ll never see /But it’ll happen when the song you’re cherishing is from the warmth of other tongues and not the band of your wedding ring
Hook
My old church building is now a mosque/I watched two friends untie the knot/My brother no longer believes in God/When things don’t finish the way they start/Some things, they fall apart(repeat)
Verse 3
A lack of oxygen will suffocate the most vigorous of flames/When she took our breath away, I knew your interests would change/I know you would find yourself in the most different of place/I just thought I’d never see the day your faith isn’t ablaze/I mean I’ve seen you preach and people leave their seats and hit the floor/So I was floored to learn that you don’t believe any more/And are ashamed that you actually did/But I shouldn’t look in the place where you feel, but the place where you slipped/
Hook
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6. |
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Father’s Day
Verse 1
We were enthused to choose the hue we would color your room/Would announce your arrival to neighbors with two dozen balloons/We were consumed doing what any other couple should do/Little did we presume in June trouble would loom/Soon after the wedding day, we began to meditate/Whether to grow our family, or let Providence set the date/During said debate we saw that God had set the stage/We both figured it couldn’t have happened a better way/And I, who had argued for a time more reasonable/Was overjoyed with the thought of the new life that we’d behold/Then everything we’d been dreaming for was dashed by the unthinkable/My knees buckled—it was too much for me to hold/As the scene unfolds, I heard what the doctor would say,/“Sir, you will be a father I pray/And I am sure you’ll be great/But I’m afraid to say that day will not be today”/We lost who would have been our first child one morning on Father’s Day
Verse 2
I couldn’t muster the strength to display any vigor/Looking flustered at the anguish that was laying within her/I shuttered at the pain that came within her whimpers/“It’ll be okay,” is what I conveyed within whispers/But whispers couldn’t explain in words the ways in which it hurt/Nor assuage the pangs that were languishing her/Our embrace was tender—I pulled her closer/Tears slid down her cheek and pooled onto my shoulder/I wept, she wept, both of us wept/But neither of us could foresee the joy we’d meet next/As things would progress, we would be parents yet/And now we have three, it’s better than we could expect/Each day they remind us how precious this life is/And make me measure how I live with the time I get/Because they’ll follow my steps more than the advice I give/So guidance is in my steps and they’re striding beside it
Verse 3
I baptized my eldest on the morning that Kobe died/We didn’t know at the time/We were on an emotional high/The moments he chose to go into the skies/Happened to be a sobering time in both of our lives/But our thoughts were blunted by what unfolded before our eyes/He held his daughter close about the time I was holding mine/They rode through the cirrus; I seriously floated on Cloud 9/Thinking about the Most High and the joy He provides/This faith is a gift—salvation is a miracle/And I teared up seeing its foundations take space in my little girl/Her knowing God is the greatest thing here in this world/It’s all I could think of as I stood so near to her/I thought on that, firmed my grip, then dipped my daughter/While he ripped the firmament splitting the waters from waters/She descended with both of my eyes fixed upon her/While he ascended and then his pilot’s vision would falter/Our lives altered in that moment; it was awkward/She rose; they plunged into indiscriminate horror/While I had no knowledge of that unmentionable carnage/I was just twitching at this gift which God had brought us/So there we were, just two men with their daughters/One lifting his the other clenching his/Both seeing the benefits of what he was holding between his fists/Which is the life of a father sitting in the grip of men
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9. |
Ba Bié
03:32
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Timothy Welbeck Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Timothy Welbeck is what happens when your favorite lawyer and favorite rapper are the same person. He’s an MC turned Civil Rights attorney and university professor who has crafted a stirring brand of music that is thought-provoking and relevant, honest and life-changing. In that way he represents literally and figuratively. ... more
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