Lettre à la République [English translation]

Letter to the Republic

To all these racists to hypocritical tolerance

Who built their nation on blood

Now pose giving lessons

Plunderers of wealth, killers of Africans

Colonizers, torturers of Algerians

This colonial past is yours

It is you who have chosen to link your story to ours

Now you must take

The smell of blood continues even if you anoint yourself

We Arabs and blacks

We are not here by chance

All arrived at your departure!

You wished immigration

Thanks to it you have stuffed up until you had indigestion

I believe that France has never done charity

The immigrants are not the hand of cheap labor

Keep up your Republican illusion

of the sweet France flouted by African immigration

Ask the Senegalese riflemen and harkis (1)

Who benefited from that?

The Republic is innocent in your dreams

And you only have white hands that your lies

We Arabs and blacks

We are not here by chance

All arrived at your departure!

But do you think that with time

The Negroes would mature, would become whites?

But human nature has swept your projects

It just does not fit in the rejection

It just does not fit in the French ghettos, penned

Between immigrants, we must expect

How to point the finger at the community withdrawal

You have initiated from the slums of Nanterre

The arsonist and the fireman, your memory is selective

You did not come in peace, your story is aggressive

Here it is better than there, we know

Decolonize because for you it is destabilizing

The more I observe history, of course, the less I feel liable

I know that it is to be black after the time of schoolbag (2)

Although I am not ungrateful, I don't want to say thank you

Because basically I'm here, I conquered

I grew up in the favelas of Orly in France

I had "Fleury" (3) in the bush I'm at war since childhood

Drug trafficking, robbery, violence ... Crimes!

What did my brothers do if it's not under like Clear stream ... (4)

Who can lecture them? You?

Abusers of corporate assets, background embezzlers

Real thugs in suits, hypocrites!

Do the French have leaders they deserve?

At the heart of discussions, heartless debates

Always the same one points a finger in your rancor France

In economic crisis, we need a culprit

And it is towards Muslims all your shots go

I am not afraid to write: France is Islamophobic

Besides no one is hiding xenophobes in France

You treat us as less than nothing on your public channels

And you expect from us we will write "Long live the Republic!"

My respect violates the country of Human Rights

Hard to feel French without the Stockholm syndrome

Because I'm Black, Muslim, suburb-dweller and proud of it

When you see me you put a face on the other that France hates

These are the same hypocrites who talk about diversity

Expressing racism under the guise of secularism

Dreaming of a unique French people, with a single identity

Bent on discriminating the same minorities

Faced with the same voters, the same fears were stirred

It opposes the communities, to hide the insecurity

Nobody is surprised if it ends tomorrow in a fart

How to love a country that refuses to respect us

Far transparent artists, I write as a mirror this text

As France look to it if she wants to see it

She will fly the illusion that she is herself

I don't need affection

Understand that I will not wait more than she loves me!

• Artist:Kery James
• Album:92.2012 (2012)