[Intro]
She is living just enough for the city
Nights, lights
Split shifts, two jobs
Heavy hitting the books then the evening
Kisses baby girl at sunrise
Shower, breath, eat
Her cycle spinning
Just enough for the city
Nights, lights
She works hard for the money
Bent over backwards
Wind in her hair
Weighted shoulders
Outrun burden
Caring all her cares
Just enough for the city
Nights, lights
Her only promise is friday
Friday never lied
Never left her
Single
Mother
Hustler
[Verse 1: Bishop Lamont]
Downtown on the corners, I pa** many wounded warriors
Left home to fight for home and return they rewards going homeless
A pity how the city won't make them a new tenant
But keep putting up new laws while pushin them further out the city limit
Living American dream, more like a nightmare
In your sleep, but if you wake up, the terrors still right there
Land of milk and honey, though it's spoiled I guess
While families struggle for they money tryin reach success
Or reaching over gas station counters for a Powerball
Or Megamillions with their very last dollars, y'all
How many people overmaxed their debit cards on gas?
Every week they get to work till they get they get they check to cash
Make it last how can you when it's always so little
Life's a blur, I fight the urge to merge with the Demiurge
A cold wind struck me as that thought occurred
Chill me to my very core, raised the hair on my arms, and frazzled my nerves
Then I was like, I was like, my mind's playin tricks on me
Feelin like the Ghetto Boys, I hope I'm not paranoid
But can't escape what's a plug for the Matrix
I can't go back, the future, I must face it
[Hook]
I'm working, I'm put my work in
But don't nothing ever seem to ever be working
I gotta get mine, up before sunrise
To get my babies dressed, fed, and off to school
Lord I be wonderin why I be strugglin
Can't take much more, I gotta give it over you
Cause I hate my job, can't stand my boss
But I don't know what else to do
Life in the city
[Verse 2: MK Asante]
Uptown with the sunrise
George Jackson, Blood in My Eye
Make the sun cry, School of Hard Knock alumni
On some other sh** like boardin the Mothership
Shelf ya speech, nah, we don't do Governments
k** the ads, d**h to fake governance
Send Congress to the same place my brother went
Chain gang, hell bound, state penitent
k**adel, Pistovane, yeah we militant
Nobody break up fights, too busy filming it
Fiends nod to beats of despair, feeling it
City ice cold but still ain't got no chill in it
Old heads shakin they heads in bewilderment
At young bucks goin buck wild in the wilderness
Survival mode, hackers living by code
Taxes tap into phones, kids dying by drones
I spark a Rello, inhale the scene, and pen a poem
About this smart project teen all on her own
Labeled less, just cause she ain't got no home
Told her ‘keep ya head up, beloved, claim ya throne'
[Hook]