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Album: The Dreaming Room (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song about black resilience ends with a verse by London Grime MC and rapper Wretch 32, who is best known for his 2011 UK chart-topper "Don't Go."
  • Laura Mvula sings here of how "our skin was a terrible thing to live in." The lyric is about the emotionally scarring attitudes the singer's classmates had towards her dark skin when she was a child "When I sing that line I always think about the experience I had when I was young, where kids in infant school wouldn't hold my hand," Mvula explained to the Evening Standard magazine. "You know when they line up the kids and say, 'Get a partner, hold hands'? They would say, 'No, I'm not holding her hand because I'm scared the brown's going to rub off'."

    "At that point in my life," she added, "as a five- or six-year-old, being taught subconsciously that there's something not quite right with my skin led me on a very difficult and distorted path in terms of my identity, self-worth and self-esteem."

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