Seve
"Sève" is about how inequality can survive without openly announcing itself.
It argues that society may claim to have one set of laws and rules, while in practice people can receive very different opportunities, punishments, mercy, and treatment depending on their race, class, neighborhood, and economic position. Redlining and unequal drug sentencing are used as examples of this idea—hence the metaphor “two sets of books.”
But the song eventually goes deeper than race. It suggests that racial and social divisions can keep ordinary people fighting each other while those with greater economic or institutional power benefit from the division. The poor Black family and poor white family may be encouraged to see each other as enemies even though both can experience exploitation, poverty, loss, and war.
The final message is essentially:
Don't judge a society only by what its laws say or what its symbols represent. Examine the outcomes. Count who receives opportunity, who receives punishment, who receives mercy, who is excluded, and most importantly, ask who benefits when people remain divided.
A striking album cover for ZSORAYII’s “Sève” shows a Black woman in an elegant red gown standing between two enormous open hands. The worn Black hand leads toward a dark, restricted industrial neighborhood, while the lighter hand leads toward prosperous homes, banks, and a bright city. Veins transform into divided roads, while blood from both hands merges beneath her dress, symbolizing shared humanity beneath unequal systems.
They drew the map
in thirty foouur,
shaded her block
in red and shut the dooor,
called it risk,
called it prudence,
called it arithmetiiic,
same brick,
same mortar,
same forty years of reeent,
one address is an heirloom,
the other's an accideeent.
Tell me who wrote it,
tell me who reads it,
tell me who paaays
when the numbers don't agreee.
Two sets of boooks,
one house of laaaw,
one page for the ledger,
one page for the saaaw,
they don't need a hood
when they got a courthouse dooor,
oh oh ohhh,
that's what the division's foooor.
Powder in the penthouse
get a program and a pleeea,
rock on the corner
get a decade and a keeey,
same molecule,
same chemist,
same anchor on the neeews,
all depends on who is holding
and which block they choooose.
Tell me who wrote it,
tell me who reads it,
tell me who bleeeds
when the numbers don't agreee.
Two sets of boooks,
one house of laaaw,
one page for the ledger,
one page for the saaaw,
they don't need a hood
when they got a courthouse dooor,
oh oh ohhh,
that's what the division's foooor.
count it,
count it,
two sets of books,
count it,
count it,
take another look,
who get the warning,
who get the cuff,
who get the mercy,
who get enough.
When they gather it's heritage,
when we gather it's a threeeat,
when they break glass it's frustration,
when we kneel it's disrespeeect,
they tell the man in the hollow
that the enemy wear my faaace,
then ship both our sons out yonder
and they call the coffins graaace,
poor was the only colour
they were ever gonna erase.
Two sets of boooks,
one house of laaaw,
one page for the ledger,
one page for the saaaw,
they don't need a hood
when they got a courthouse dooor,
oh oh ohhh,
that's what the division's foooor.
read the ledger,
not the flaaag,
count the exemptions,
not the sins,
oh oh ohhh,
every wall they ever built
had a landlord living in,
oh oh ohhh,
two sets of boooks.