The genesis - explicit album version
NAS "Get-get get down!"
New York streets where killers'll
Walk like Pistol Pete and Pappy Mason
Gave the young boys admiration
Prince from Queens and Fritz from Harlem
Street legends
The drugs kept the hood from starvin'
Pushin' cars, Nicky Barnes was the 70's
But there's a long list
Of high-profile celebrities
Worldwide on the thorough side of things
Livest kings, some died, one guy, one time
One day grabs me, as I'm about to blast heat
40-side of Vernon, I turned well he asked me
"What you up to, the cops goin' bust you"
I was a teen drunk off brew
Stumbled I wondered if God sent him
Cause two squad cars entered the block
And looked at us
I ain't flinch when they watched
I took it upstairs, the bathroom mirror
Brushed my hair starin' at a young disciple
I almost gave my life to what the dice do
Yeah man, throwin' them bones
Hopin my ace get his case thrown
His girl ain't wait for him
She in the world straight hoein'
While he lookin' at centerfolds
Of pretty girls showin' they little cooch
Gangstas don't die he's livin' proof
The DA who tried him was lyin' a white dude
Killed his mother durin' the case
Hung jury, now the DA is bein' replaced
Pre-trial hearin' is over
It's real for the soldier
Walks in the courtroom
The look in his eyes is wild
Triple-homicide, I sit in the back aisle
I want to crack a smile when I see him
Throw up a fist for black power
Cause all we want is his freedom
He grabbed a court officer's
Gun and started squeezin'
Then he grabbed the judge, screams out
Nobody leavin' everybody
Everybody
"Get down, get down! Get down, get down!"
Some niggas fuck they enemies in they
Ass when they catch 'em
Weird-ass niggas are dangerous
So don't test 'em they make you, disappear
This a year that I won't forget
Sold CD's double platinum, met mo' execs
Southern niggas, independent label
Real killers
Know the business, ran Tennessee for years
Now they chillin'
They had the coke game somethin' crazy
Sold music out the trunk of they car
That shit amazed me
Put me onto heron blunts, sherm or somethin'
Took a puff, what the fuck
I turned to punch them
Southern niggas ain't slow
Nigga tried to play me
I left from around them dudes
They cool but they crazy
Now I'm back around the old
School that raised me
New York gangstas, we loungin', out in LA see
A dude wrote my dawg from Pelican Bay
The letter say
"Nas I got your back - the fools don't play"
I rolled with some Crips down
To a Crenshaw funeral
Never saw so many men slaughtered and
I knew the ho responsible
The nigga still alive in a hospital
Midnight they crept in his room
And shot the doctor too
See my cousin's in the game
Thuggin' and things he plugged me with a
Dame who was half-Mexicano
Gave the ass up, I'ma mack daddy Soprano
She passed me the indigo, but the imbecile
Should of never tippy-toed
Thought my eyes were closed
Openin' the hotel room do'
To let her goons in
But I moved in a manner, on some Jet Li shit
I let the hammers blow, wet three kids
See honey thought I had somethin' to do
With all the drama cause I was with a crew
That had her people killed
Called up my cousin
Told him I ain't fuckin' with you
He responded cool
But told me out here this how motherfuckers
All I really gotta say is that
If that's how our people goin' get down
How we ever goin' get up?
How we ever goin' get up if
That's how we get down?
A shame when you ain't look at it
My folk is yo' folk, but we all kinfolk
Somebody gotta make a change