[Production from Hot Sugar]
[Dying Casio]
[MUSICAL INTRO]
[Verse 1: Aaron Livingston]
Like when autumn leaves fall
Down from the trees
There goes my honey bee
[Hook: Aaron Livingston]
I’ve lost a lot of sleep to dreams
And I do not miss them yet
I wouldn’t wish them on the worst of enemies
Let them burn, go from here
Like when autumn leaves
[Verse 2: Black Thought]
To catch a thief, who stole the soul I prayed to keep
Insomniac, bad dreams got me losing sleep
I’m dead tired, my mind playing tricks, deceit
A face in the glass, unable to admit defeat
All that I am, all that I was is history
The past unraveled, adding insult to this injury
I’m fighting the battle for the soul of the century
Destiny is everything that I pretend to be
Look, and what I did came back to me eventually
The music played on, and told me I was meant to be awake
It’s unresolved like everything I had at stake
Illegal activity controls my black symphony
Orchestrated like it happened incidentally
Oh, there I go, from a man to a memory
Damn, I wonder if my fam will remember me
[Hook]
[Dying Casio]
[MUSICAL INTRO]
[Verse 1: Aaron Livingston]
Like when autumn leaves fall
Down from the trees
There goes my honey bee
[Hook: Aaron Livingston]
I’ve lost a lot of sleep to dreams
And I do not miss them yet
I wouldn’t wish them on the worst of enemies
Let them burn, go from here
Like when autumn leaves
[Verse 2: Black Thought]
To catch a thief, who stole the soul I prayed to keep
Insomniac, bad dreams got me losing sleep
I’m dead tired, my mind playing tricks, deceit
A face in the glass, unable to admit defeat
All that I am, all that I was is history
The past unraveled, adding insult to this injury
I’m fighting the battle for the soul of the century
Destiny is everything that I pretend to be
Look, and what I did came back to me eventually
The music played on, and told me I was meant to be awake
It’s unresolved like everything I had at stake
Illegal activity controls my black symphony
Orchestrated like it happened incidentally
Oh, there I go, from a man to a memory
Damn, I wonder if my fam will remember me
[Hook]
Track 2 on undun
About Sleep
“Sleep” is first vocal track on the Roots' concept album undun. The album chronicles Redford Stephens, a young man growing up in the streets who is caught up in a life of crime due largely to his circumstances and society’s inequalities.
The story of undun proceeds in reverse chronological order after the violent death of the protagonist, so “Sleep,” as Questlove has written, finds “Redford disoriented post mortem.”
