Decoded (25 page)

You’re Killing Your Son. (2:16)

Woo! Uhh, uhh
/
It’s “The Gift & the Curse”
¹
/ Uhh, uhh yea / First they love me then they hate me then they love me again / … they love me again / Let’s take a trip down … I gotcha /
Let’s take a trip down memory lane at the cemetery
²
/ Rain gray skies, seems at the end of every / young black life is this line, “Damn—him already? / Such a good kid,” got us pourin Henn’ already /
Liquor to the curb for my niggaz up above
/
When it cracks through the pavement that’s my way of sendin love
³
/ So, give Big a hug, tell Aa-liyah I said hi / ‘Til the next time I see her, on the other side / He was just some thug that caught some slugs / And we loved him cause in him we saw some of us / He walked like ussss, talked like ussss /
His back against the wall, nigga fought like us—damn
⁴
/ Poor Isis, that’s his momma name
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/ Momma ain’t strong enough to raise no boy, what’s his father name? / Shorty never knew him, though he had his blood in him /
Hot temper, momma said he act just like her husband
⁶
/ Daddy never fucked with him, so the streets raised him / Isis blamin herself, she wish she coulda saved him / Damn near impossible, only men can raise men / He was his own man, not even him can save him / He put his faith in, uh, thirty-eight in his waist / But when you live by the gun you die by the same fate / End up dead before thirty-eight and umm /
That’s the life of us raised by winter, it’s a cold world
⁷
/ Old girl turned to coke, tried to smoke her pain away / Isis, life just ended on that rainy day / When she got the news her boy body could be viewed / down at the City Morgue, opened the drawer, saw him nude / Her addiction grew, prescription drugs, sipping brew /
Angel dust, dipped in
woo
!
⁸
/ She slipped into her own fantasy world
⁹
/ Had herself pregnant by a different dude / But reality bites and this is her life / He wasn’t really her husband, though he called her wife / It was just this night when moon was full /
And the stars were just right, and the dress was real tight
¹⁰
/ Had her soundin like Lisa Lisa
¹¹
—
I wonder if I take you home
/
will you still love me after this night?
/ Mike was the hardhead from the around the way / that she wanted all her life, shit she wanted all the hype / Used to hold on tight when he wheelied on the bike / He was a Willie all her life he wasn’t really the one to like / It was a dude named Sha who would really treat her right / He wanted to run to the country to escape the city life /
But I-sis, like this, Broadway life
¹²
/ She loved the Gucci sneakers, the red green and whites / Hangin out the window when she first seen him fight /
She was so turned on that she had to shower twice
¹³
/ How ironic, it would be some fight that / turned into a homicide that’ll alter their life / See Mike at thirty-two was still on the scene / Had a son fifteen that he never saw twice / Sure he saw him as an infant, but he disowned him like / “If that was my son, he would look much different. / See I’m light-skinnded and that baby there’s dark.” /
So it’s momma’s baby; poppa’s maybe.
¹⁴
/ Mike was still crazy out there runnin the streets (fuck niggaz want?) / had his old reliable thirty-eight gun in his reach / It’s been fourteen years, him and Isis ain’t speak / He runnin around like life’s a peach, ’til one day / he approached this thug that had a mean mug /
And it looked so familiar that he called him “Young Cuz”
¹⁵
/ Told him, get off the strip but the boy ain’t budge (fuck you) /
Instead he pulled out a newer thirty-eight snub
¹⁶
/ He clearly had the drop but the boy just paused (hold up) / There was somethin in this man’s face he knew he seen before / It’s like lookin in the mirror seein hisself more mature /
And he took it as a sign from the almighty Lord
¹⁷
/ You know what they say about he who hesitates in war / (What’s that?) He who hesitates is lost / He can’t explain what he saw before his picture went blank /
The old man didn’t think he just followed his instinct
¹⁸
/ Six shots into his kin, out of the gun / Niggaz be a father, you’re killin your son / Six shots into his kin, out of the gun /
Niggaz be a father, you killin your sons
¹⁹
/ Meet the parents …
²⁰

Where I’m From. (1:54)

I’m from where the
hammers rung,
¹
news cameras never come
²
 
/ You and your man hung in every verse in your rhyme / where the grams is slung,
niggas vanish every summer
³
 / Where the blue vans would come,
we throw the work in the can and run
⁴
 / Where the plans was to get funds and
skate off the set
⁵
 / To achieve this goal quicker,
sold all my weight wet
⁶
 / Faced with immeasurable odds still I gave straight bets / So I felt I’m owed something and you nothing, check /
I’m from the other side with other guys don’t walk too much
⁷
 / And girls in the projects wouldn’t fuck us if we talked too much / So they ran up to Tompkins and sought them dudes to trust /
I don’t know what the fuck they thought, those niggas is foul just like us
⁸
 / I’m from where the beef is inevitable,
⁹
summertime’s unforgettable /
Boosters in abundance, buy a half-price sweater new
¹⁰
 / Your word was everything, so everything you said you’d do /
You did it, couldn’t talk about it if you ain’t lived it
¹¹
 / I from where niggas pull your card, and argue all day about /
Who’s the best MC, Biggie, Jay-Z, and Nas
¹²
/ Where the
drugs czars evolve,
¹³
and thugs are at odds / At each other’s throats for the love of foreign cars / Where cats catch cases,
hoping the judge R-and-R’s
¹⁴
 / But most times find themselves locked up behind bars /
I’m from where they ball and breed rhyme stars
¹⁵
 / I’m from Marcy son, just thought I’d remind y’all / Cough up a lung, where I’m from, Marcy son, ain’t nothing nice /
Mentally been many places but I’m Brooklyn’s own
¹⁶
 / I’m from the place where the
church is the flakiest
¹⁷
 /
And niggas is praying to god so long that they atheist
¹⁸
 / Where you can’t put your vest away and say you’ll wear it tomorrow / ’Cause the day after we’ll be saying, damn I was just with him yesterday / I’m a block away from hell, not enough shots away from stray shells /
An ounce away from a triple beam still using a handheld weight scale
¹⁹
/ You’re laughing, you know the place well / Where the liquor stores and the base dwell /
And government, fuck government, niggas politic themselves
²⁰
/ Where we call the cops the A-Team / Cause they hop out of vans and spray things /
And life expectancy so low we making out wills at eighteen
²¹
/ Where how you get rid of guys who step out of line, your rep solidifies /
So tell me when I rap you think I give a fuck who criticize?
²²
/ If the shit is lies, god strike me / And I got a question, are you forgiving guys who live just like me? /
We’ll never know
²³
/ One day I pray to you and said if I ever blow, I’d let ’em know / Mistakes and exactly what takes place in the ghetto /
Promise fulfilled, but still I feel my job ain’t done
²⁴
/ Cough up a lung, where I’m from, Marcy son, ain’t nothing nice / I’m from where they cross over and
clap boards
²⁵
/
Lost Jehovah in place of rap lords, listen
²⁶
/ I’m up the block, round the corner, and down the street / From where the pimps, prostitutes, and the drug lords meet /
We make a million off of beats, cause our stories is deep
²⁷
/
And fuck tomorrow, as long as the night before was sweet
²⁸
/ Niggas get lost for weeks in the streets,
twisted off leek
²⁹
/ And no matter the weather, niggas know how to draw heat / Whether you’re four feet or Manute-size, it always starts out with / Three dice and shoot the five / Niggas thought they deuce was live, until I hit ’em with trips /
And I reached down for their money, pa forget about this
³⁰
/ This time around it’s platinum, like the shit on my wrist / And this Glock on my waist, y’all can’t do shit about this / Niggas will show you love, that’s how they fool thugs /
Before you know it you’re lying in a pool of blood
³¹