Black love
I don't gotta explain too much
My folks got my back like no one does
Something bout loving you in our native tongue
Opens up possibilities and heals where I'm from
I love the way my name feels in your mouth
I hope I hold yours as delicate and proud
I wonder if the ancestors smile when they see us
Something bout your happiness feels like freedom

Black love is always, always there for you
Black love is always, always there for you
Black love is always, always there for you
For us, for us
Black love is always, always there for you
Black love is always, always there for you
Black love is always, always there for you
For us, for us

I sang about the quest on the first take
Projected where I'd find love in a new way
Landed on the motherland in February
Still shaky from the jump
But my soul was good to undertake what was to come
New era and a new day
Clean slate to start again with my family
18 years separated, no more shadowboxing
Holding on to thoughts that weren't mine
Time to get real with the storyline
A vision of my father in the eyes of all his brothers
Laughing at the kitchen table, teasing one another
The aunties making sure that everything's in order
Chilling in the living room, chatting up for hours
Needed some connection that I didn't know I needed
Needed a reflection of myself that's deeply seated
Needed to find what I was told was long gone
The future is bleak when you don't know where you're from
Now moving forward
Open-hearted conversations
Healing in so many spaces
Breaking down and picking up the pieces
Bunna sipping, practicing tradition
Quietly observing, catching up and navigating
All that's in between worlds
My head high, the more I discover
What it means to be a member of the team
Realizing that everybody had lost
Mending what I thought and what it was

Black love is always, always there for you
Black love is always, always there for you
Black love is always, always there for you
For us, for us

There was nothing like the first time that I touched home
Saw every side of life right there on Bole Road
Got to rock a show with Mulatu in the front row
And then shared bunna every morning for the next week
Connections were deep
My Amharic, weak
But I wasn't afraid to speak
Saw friends become family
I didn't want to leave
I still can't believe it
But one by one, my close ones started leaving
I started seeing pictures of a different Addis
And didn't recognize any of the places I've been
I started making this album to remember
In January 2020, but that November
A war popped off
Now I feel dismembered
I got good friends with family members missing
I got some friends that act like nothing's different
And some wave flags like they celebrate the militants
I just mourn my idea of home
And this, too, is a pain that our parents have known
How they all got through it, y'all, I just don't know
But I don't think any of us can do it alone

Black love is always, always there for you
Black love is always, always there for you
Black love is always, always there for you
For us, for us
For us
Black love is always, always there for you
Black love is always, always there for you
Black love is always, always there for you
For us, for us
Black love is always, always there for you
Black love is always, always there for you
Black love is always, always there for you
For us, for us