MyBesh MyBesh
There Is No End album cover by Tony Allen

30-sec preview

2021 · From the album There Is No End

Coonta Kinte (feat. Zelooperz)

by Tony Allen

6 Views
03:08 Runtime

The reading

A posthumously released Afrobeat collaboration where Detroit rapper Zelooperz turns Tony Allen's drums into a platform for naming the cost of being Black and outspoken in America

02 · Interpretation

Tony Allen & Zelooperz, 'Coonta Kinte': Speaking Loud Enough to Be Feared

E Editorial Desk

'Coonta Kinte' is one of fourteen tracks on 'There Is No End', the album Tony Allen was assembling before his death in April 2020 and which Blue Note released a year later. The project was conceived as a bridge between Allen's Afrobeat drumming and a new generation of rappers from the English-speaking diaspora. On this cut, Detroit's Zelooperz takes the microphone, and the title, a phonetic nod to Kunta Kinte of Alex Haley's 'Roots', frames everything that follows as a lineage story about Black speech and Black survival.

The hook is the thesis. Zelooperz repeats that his words are powerful enough that "they might come for me," paired with the chant "ain't no justice or no peace." That protest-slogan inversion (the familiar phrasing is "no justice, no peace") reads less like a demand than a diagnosis: neither thing is on offer. The danger of speaking and the absence of recourse are stated as the baseline conditions of the song.

The first verse: catching up to the world

The opening verse is autobiographical in an oblique way. Zelooperz describes moving through the world "with no words sent from vengeance," then asks an absent figure why he was left "with no senses." The implication is a childhood without the tools to read what was happening to him. He answers the problem himself: he wasn't born with knowledge, so he had to go get it, tired of waiting for the world to lift him. The verse then slides into a scene of young people skating, getting drunk at a pavilion, as if to say the self-education happens inside ordinary nights, not in classrooms. The admission that "we all insufficient" is the quiet center of the verse.

The second verse: naming the thing

The middle verse drops the obliqueness. Zelooperz has "a bone to pick like a dinosaur's tibia," a joke that buys him the room to ask a direct question: "Why you want me in the ground? 'Cause my skin soil?" The pun on soil (dirt, and something soiled) collapses two accusations into one syllable. The next line, "I'm just a black man in a world full of colors," refuses the framing that Blackness is itself the problem. The verse ends with a line that could be sincere or bitter depending on how you hear it: every day it feels like we're getting "more lucky." In the context of a hook about being hunted for speech, luck sounds like the wrong word, which seems to be the point.

The closing verse: the room after the sermon

The final verse pulls back from protest into scene. Zelooperz is in bed, sipping something sweet, waiting for his "show to finish." The images are domestic and a little surreal: an afro ponytail, a watermelon, friends with guns ("blicky blicky"), style and thongs and skinny jeans. In the middle of it he mentions "having talks with Tony upstairs," which lands differently given that Allen was gone before the record came out. Whether written before or after Allen's death, the line now functions as a benediction, placing the drummer in the room with the people the song is about.

Why it works

Allen's drumming on the track does what it always did: it keeps time without insisting on itself, leaving the vocalist space to think out loud. That space is what 'Coonta Kinte' uses. Zelooperz isn't delivering a manifesto; he's circling a worry, admitting fear, cracking a joke, and returning to the hook. The song endures on 'There Is No End' because it demonstrates the album's premise, that Afrobeat's political inheritance (Fela Kuti's confrontations with the Nigerian state, which Allen soundtracked for two decades) translates cleanly into contemporary Black American rap without either tradition having to soften.

Themes catalogued

black identity free speech state violence self-education diasporic lineage

03 · Lyrics

"Coonta Kinte (feat. Zelooperz)"

My words are powerful I see

They might come for me

Ain't no justice or no peace

They might come for me

Everybody pretending there's no ending

When it comes to spreading the good word as he mention

I been through the world with no words sent from vengeance

What was your intentions when you left me with no senses?

Wasn't born with knowledge so I had to go and get some

I got tired of waiting for the world to pick me up

When we all insufficient

Skating after loud we getting drunk at the pavilion

Ladies hit the top too many metaphors to mention

My words are powerful I see

They might come for me

Ain't no justice or no peace

They might come for me

My words are powerful I see

They might come for me

Ain't no justice or no peace

They might come for me

Let me talk to you

I got a bone to pick like a dinosaur's tibia

I used to fall for you

When I break this shit down I'm not at all for you

Why you want me in the ground? 'Cause my skin soil?

I'm just a black man in a world full of colors

Can't take me for that I really think it's small of you

I can't wait for the day when we all loving

'Cause every day it feels like we gettin' more lucky

My words are powerful I see

They might come for me

Ain't no justice or no peace

They might come for me

My words are powerful I see

They might come for me

Ain't no justice or no peace

They might come for me

Take my own defense

Back of the bed, sweet of the sip

Had to wait a while for my show to finish

Afro ponytail twerk on watermelon

Having talks with Tony upstairs and you know we chillin'

Faye loud through the vocals everybody feeling

Style picking thongs

Wit the skinny minis

Sam and Sam and Charles wit the blicky blicky

Lyrics via Google. Copyright belongs to rights holders.

04 · FAQ

Frequently asked

What does the title 'Coonta Kinte' refer to?
The title is a phonetic play on Kunta Kinte, the enslaved African protagonist of Alex Haley's 'Roots'. By reaching for that name, Zelooperz frames the song as part of a long lineage of Black speech under threat, and connects his Detroit vantage point to Tony Allen's African musical inheritance.
What does the line 'why you want me in the ground? 'cause my skin soil?' mean?
It's a pun that compresses two things into one word. 'Soil' means dirt, the ground he's being pushed into, and it also carries the sense of something tainted. The line asks why Blackness is treated as grounds for burial, and refuses the premise in the next bar: he's just a Black man in a world full of colors.
Who is Zelooperz and how did he end up on a Tony Allen track?
Zelooperz is a Detroit rapper associated with Danny Brown's Bruiser Brigade. 'There Is No End' was designed as a collaboration record pairing Allen's drum sessions with rappers and singers from the diaspora, and Zelooperz is one of several guest vocalists featured across the fourteen tracks.
Why is 'There Is No End' a posthumous Tony Allen album?
Tony Allen died in Paris in April 2020, roughly a year before the album's April 2021 release on Blue Note. He had recorded the drum foundations and planned the collaborations before his death, and the record was completed and sequenced afterward.
What is Zelooperz referring to when he raps 'having talks with Tony upstairs'?
Taken at face value it's a reference to conversation with Tony Allen himself. Because the track was released after Allen's death, the line now plays as a quiet acknowledgment of his absence, placing the drummer in the song even as his part was already recorded.
How does 'Coonta Kinte' fit with the rest of 'There Is No End'?
The album pairs Allen's Afrobeat drumming with rappers including Danny Brown, Koreatown Oddity, Nate Bone and others. 'Coonta Kinte' sits among the more politically direct cuts, using Allen's steady groove as a bed for Zelooperz to work through the risks of speaking as a Black man in America.
Why does the hook change 'no justice, no peace' to 'ain't no justice or no peace'?
The protest chant is usually a threat or a demand: without justice, there will be no peace. Zelooperz flips it into a description of the current state. Neither justice nor peace is present. That small grammatical shift turns a slogan into a report, which matches the song's resigned, watchful tone.
—
0:00 -0:00