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Subject: Chuck D / Public Enemy / Generation Wrekkked (Generation Wrecked)

Written By: Foo Bar on 02/01/08 at 11:23 pm

Does anyone have (or can anyone decipher?) the lyrics to Generation Wrekkked (Danny Saber Rock Mix), which appears on the soundtrack to the 1997 Gregg Araki movie Nowhere.  (Great movie.  If you enjoyed what Mondo New York did for late-80s New York... consider this as the late-90s LA version.)

Take the freaky electronica backbeats of Crystal Method, Daft Punk, or Chemical Brothers, but with the lyrical aggression that made Public Enemy famous.  I'd recommend it to anyone disillusioned with late 90s rap: rap didn't have to become a boring parody of itself, and this track is proof of the potential the genre has ignored for the past ten years.

On to the lyrics.  You can google these lyrics, and you'll get one set of lyrics.  Problem is, this particular mix is not the same as the original from Chuck D's solo album Autobiography of Mistachuck; aside from the chorus, none of the lyrics are the same.  Other problem is, like most of Public Enemy's uptempo tracks, it's hard to keep track of who's saying what, and over whom.  It makes it fun and challenging to listen to, but it also makes lyric transcription pretty hellish.

Here's what I have:

(sampled -- does anyone have a source for this sample?  Probably a pretty famous speech.)
"(I say,) you youngsters day, you got a big job.  You have a very big job, because the very fate and destiny of America today... depends on you young folks-"

INTRO:
If I can't change the people around me, I change the people around me.
If I can't change the people around me, I change the people around me.

CHORUS: (Sorry about the filterdodging, moderators, but the chorus is repeated so often throughout the song that it's the first thing anyone will ever search for, and I'd like them to land here!)
Some don't know what's up.  Sh*t is just f*cked up.
They don't know what's next.  Generation wrekkked.

What goes around comes back around again,
Beware, it's everywhere, could come from anywhere...
(And then it gets radio-unfriendly -- and I have so few of these lines nailed down that I'm embarassed to guess, other than that Chuck's really mad about gang shootings from kindergarten to high school)

(Second verse starts with)
Prison favors, organized slave labor,
Life savers?  Yo, Chuck, where the f*ck is Flava?
For real n*ggas jacked for Tommy Hilfigers,
Robbin' bodegas, ? dead for shots in Vegas,
(and then it gets really confusing)

(Third verse)
(and I'm completely lost for most of the lines here, don't even want to guess!)
Armageddon, stop hip-hop ? ? the rhyme(rhyme, rhyme...echo effect)

Subject: Re: Chuck D / Public Enemy / Generation Wrekkked (Generation Wrecked)

Written By: whistledog on 02/01/08 at 11:36 pm

Perhaps Chuck G can deciper the lyrics to Chuck D :D

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