Lyrics
[Verse 1 - High-pitched, aggressive, punchy delivery] Yeah, yeah, top of the morning, look at the sky, it's gray, huh. Niagara Falls, we don't play, huh. July 4th, fireworks in the sky, then the steel spit, huh. Two young souls, high school grads, laid cold in the street, shit. No names on the chalk, but the block feel the heat, shit. One was a teacher's helper, one had a baby to feed, shit. Highland and Fairfield, balloons in the wind, we bleed, shit. My kids gotta grow in a warzone! (Awwwwwww!) You think it’s just the streets? No, it’s in the home! (Huh?) Look at the grass, look at the lawn, don’t touch the soil! (Don't!) Corporate giants let the backyard boil! They sent the letters in May, huh. One hundred and twenty letters in the mail, what they say, huh? They said the dirt you walk on is a jail, go away, huh! Town of Niagara, western county, we are not safe. Look at the value of the property, dropping out of space! Hold on, wait—beat switch. [ Verse 2 - Beat Switch Fast-paced, aggressive horns, marching band snare drum. High energy] Fox Avenue! Hot! Chester Avenue! Hot! Tell 'em what the testers found when they dug the plot! One hundred and twenty times the federal limit! Twelve hundred times the state guidelines in it! That’s TENORM! What’s that? Radioactive slag! They used it as cheap fill, threw it in a bag! They paved the driveways, built the foundation, Now the whole neighborhood is under radiation! My kids in the yard, they playing in the dust, While the corporate lawyers argue who to trust! Property values falling to the floor, Who’s gonna buy a house next to a poison door? No equity left! No future for the youth! Just a toxic warzone... And that’s the ugly truth. (Let’s get it, let’s get it, let’s get it) (Awwwwwwww!) [Verse 3 - Slow, soulful, jazzy boom-bap with a pitching, melancholic vocal sample loop] Look. Cross the expressway, let’s take a walk to Cayuga, Where the water meets the land, but the history will shoot ya. West Rivershore Drive, late twenty-twenty-five, Utility workers digging trenches just to stay alive. They hit the clay, smelled a stench that made their lungs decay, June twenty-six, DEC stepped in to lead the way. Active investigation on the island's western tip, They filled the land from fifty-eight to sixty-two with industrial drip. Mercury and pesticides embedded in the silt, On a bed of toxic waste, this community was built. Now they’re hand-digging the surface of the residential yards, Testing basement sump pumps, pulling down our guard. Soil vapor intrusion, breathing poison in your sleep, How we supposed to tell the kids the memories we keep Are tied to heavy metals that’ll damage up their brain? This is environmental violence, generations of pain. (Do Something) And we don't talk about Buffalo Avenue enough, Where the mud is radioactive and the pavement is rough. Decades of alloy giants, Union Carbide, Olin, Carborundum Processing the ores, making money, then they shunned them. Left the radioactive slag scattered in the street bed, Paved over the cancer, leaving us to weep instead. Two thousand sixteen, they tried to clean the trace, Dug a thousand and fifty cubic yards of TENORM from the place. Four hundred one, four hundred two Buffalo Ave, they hauled it away, Four hundred thirty got capped, but the ghosts still stay. Two thousand twenty-three, the Talarico Brothers suit, Federal court appeals, twenty-eight citizens seeking truth. Fighting for the value of the land they worked to own, But the system leaves the ghetto with a mortgage on a stone. (Do Something) We got gunshots on the fourth, clearing out the young, Then we got the slow poison silent in the lung. If the streets don't get the children, then the soil surely will, We are trapped between the trigger and the corporate landfill. Look at the properties, who’s gonna pay the fee? Leaving our surviving children with no legacy. No equity to pass down, no future in the vault, Just a toxic warzone, and we pay for their default. Western New York... Who is gonna save the children? Western New York Who is gonna save our homes? Western New York If they can dump toxic chemicals here like this, your neighborhood could be next Western New York WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP