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Kids in Mozambique and Zimbabwe

Want the same thing as those in my neighborhood

The giraffes of their ancestors the crocodiles the elephants

Are confined to tourist reservations

Guys in my neighborhood don’t care about the Eiffel Tower

Just as those in townships don’t give a damn about antelopes

It’s smokes and cokes

From Joburg to Harare, from Lusaka to Antananarivo

Their coffee’s weak but when the sun comes up

It’s the same broken bottles as in my project

A fifty-cent record burned on a PC

Passes from hand to hand along with a joint

At 6 a.m. the sun goes up on the easy life

Giving everyone a shadow and the same old routine

Kids in Zimbabwe know that the tango’s dead

That the airport is named after money instead

They’re tired of haggling to make a buck

The kids in my ‘hood and those of Zimbabwe

Play prince charming for the local girls

Not on a white horse but in brand-new Nikes

Victoria Falls or the Cote d’Azur

We’ll go there on our honeymoon for sure

They wanna be stars, attain quick fame

Win championships and Oscars, hang out on the avenue

Single mothers with divorced parents

The same sisters and brothers as we’ve got here

The wheel turns slightly with the exchange rate

From Soweto to Paris the same rules apply

It’s the same message through the same earphones

On the same chessboard, with the same pieces

When I grow up Mama I wanna be alive

And not bored all the time I have no other plans

The kids in Zimbabwe and those in my neighborhood

Pay rent for the entire world

They know rock music and the electric fairy

From Harare to Lagos, from Rome to Helsinki

Protecting culture has nothing to do with politics

So that next to the concerns of Eurocentrics

Kids in Zimbabwe and in my neighborhood

Speak the same language and wear the same clothes

The slang’s the same throughout the globe

They’ve got the same PIN codes, almost the same money

I don’t want my words to be just a travelog

Vienna can have its waltzes and Paris its Pigalle

Welcome in Shona in Swahili and in our own slang

Now that money talks I’m proud to come from the ‘hood

Now that money talks I’m proud to come from the ‘hood

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