Money Rant - Benjamin Zephaniah

Money make a rich man feel like a big man

It make a poor man feel like a hooligan

A one parent family feels like a ruffian

An those who have it won’t give you anything

Money makes your friend become your enemy

You start to see things very superficially

Your life is lived very artificially

Unlike those who live in poverty

Money affects your ego

But money brings you down

Money causes problems anywhere money is found

Food is what we need

Food is necessary

Let me grow my food

An dem can eat dem money

Money can save us

But yet we feel doomed

Plenty money burns in a nuclear mushroom

Money can make you happy

Money can help you when you die

An those who have it continually live a lie

Children are dying

Spies are spying

Refugees are fleeing

Politicians are lying

An deals are done

An webs are spun

An no one keeps the third world on the run

An the brother feels better than the brothers next door

Cause his brothers got money an his brothers got more

The brother thinks a brother’s not a brother cause he’s poor

When a brother kills another that is economic war

Economic war we call it economic war

It may not be the east and west anymore

But the north and south third world far lord

Coffee an isle

That’s what it’s about

Economic war

Economic war

Shots fired from the stock market floor

So we work for a livin'

An we try an we try

With so little time for chillin'

Like we’re livin a lie

Money makes a dream become reality

Money makes real life like a fantasy

Money has a habit of going to the head

I have some for the rainy day underneath me bed

Money problems make it hard to relax

Money makes it difficult to get down to the facts

Money makes you worship vanity and lies

Money is a drug with legal highs

The parents of poor kids

Some are not coping

Some are just managing

Books that need balancin'

Property is theft

No money means death

You pay for your rent

An then nothing left

Some will pick your pocket

Some will pay to stop it

Those who will pay to stop it

They happy cause they got it

Some go out an fight for it

Some claim they got the right to it

An people like my grandparents

Live long but never side it

Money made me go out an rob

Then it made me go looking for a job

Money made the nurse

And the doctor emigrate

Money buys friends you love to hate

Money made slavery seem alright

Money brought the Bible

An the Bible shone the light

Victory to the penniless

The gospel shows us

We come to mash those market forces

The paper giant called market forces