Living in some times that's the craziest
They say these legislators are the laziest
Dedicated religious figures have gone atheist
Each and everything must change there's no escaping this

I'm on the block post apocalyptic smoke covers
Coincidentally presented by the Koch brothers
The magnitude of this is bigger than the both of us
The attitude is trying to manage not to choke from it

Go and get the bolt cutters. Open the flood gate
Any relationship I've ever been in was love/hate
The city I was living in really never was safe
For some a temporary resolution was duct tape

Now I'mma probably be on the black list
But I don't give a fuck so I'mma shrug like Atlas
And if my skepticism was a brand new practice
Would y'all be disappointed like you just got catfished?

It's cold-blooded. I'm whole-heartedly cold-hearted and swole from it
The same unseen hands still in control of it
I should be minding own like it's a gold nugget
But I'm on that same bullshit just on a lower budget

Waiting on chains that bend low
To let day after tomorrow I sit by the window
And the police state like your man Michael Winslow
My kinfolk told me there's a brand new Jim Crow
I've been going to bed at ten up at five
Hustle to the bus and ride
To the job

It's feeling hot as the Fourth of July
My lady just getting home. We living separate lives
She couldn't be one of those Stepford wives if she tried

They shot my cousin. He died. It wasn't justified
I guess I see him if I make it to the other side
The corner deli owner tell me hurry up and buy
If everybody is somebody tell me who am I?

The same figure who came from Anguilla
Ain't nothing different
I think I'm addicted to pain killers
I'm unpermitted to enter the village
Of Shangri La
I'm depicted as being the killa this dangerous, huh?

Half dozen in one hand, Six in the other
Yo, this is more than a suntan
; it's living color

Black as oblivion
Black as obsidian
Black as the sky at midnight alto-meridian
I am black as the porch who
With Diddy, 2Pac, and Biggie in
Black as the influence on the culture we're living in
I survived the childless circuit
Vaudevillian in
Managed inspire the Beatles and Bob Dylan and them
But did I miss the mark because I'm just as dark
As John Hendrick Clark's inner thoughts
At the time of the Harlem Renaissance

After which
Rights activists
Deviated the flight path
The black ratchedness
Putting us back smack dab
Where night catches us
We just go along for the ride
Passengers

Gluttons for punishment. Masochists
Still doing whatever master asks of us
Will this generation go down as the last of us?
Will being young men while black was hazardous?

Into the proverbial masked avenger all these pretenders
Suffer from symptoms of affluenza
I'm just thinking out loud about
Extinction and genders and plans
My grandmother definitely remembers
Listen her suits were tailor made
Sundays Mahila played
Simple familiar ways like the way she
Knelt and prayed
Well and Lord and master forgive us our trust
Pastors had us well afraid

I never listened. But I still obeyed
I got to see how the gangsters played at such an early age
When my father was there to set them to us early grave
Their mom started chasing that base like Willie Mays
My childhood was all of 40 nights and 40 days
Trouble was my ball and chain
Shorties would call me names

Humble beginnings black daughters what that all became
My journey from a dirty hallway to the hall of fame
Music my therapeutic way to deal with all this pain

I was headed for the drain
Soaking before the rain water came
And chaos that's when the order came
I started what I'm supposed to in life
Trying to move out of the dark and closer to the light

They say when you get a chance to do it over
. Do it right
Because tomorrow was a promise every time we say "Good night"

Listen
Dope Shot
Mug Shot
Gun Shot
Jump Shot

Take your pick. But you only got only one shot
Advice from a school teacher to a young tot
Applying a sticker to a Spiderman lunch box

When even role models tell us we're born to be felons
And we ain't getting into Harvard or Carnegie Mellon
And of these other people's blessings we've grown to be jealous
It's not fair that's all they can tell us

That's why I hustle hella hard
I don't celebrate a holiday
That could be the day a brother could have struck the lottery
I refuse to ever to lose or throw my shot away

Or chalk it up to just another one that got away
So I'm unapologetic
I'm on my calisthenics
If I had giving it all I got I can not regret it


My final destination's different from where I was headed
Because I'm going to shoot for the stars to get it

One shot