[Intro (Overlapped with Bridge and Hook): Icon]
Psst. What? sh** is different now. Word up. That's millennium sh**. What? Word up. It's the start of a new beginning, kid. It's all tunes now. We're here now. Word up. Rise of the empire, n***a. Word up. sh** is different now. Not the same. Now you know. Yo, this is what we here for. Put y'all on. Yo, sh** like this
[Bridge: Sample from Ella Fitzgerald's “Anything Goes”]
Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got the shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock
[Hook: Sample from Ella Fitzgerald's “Anything Goes”] (x4)
Times have changed
[Verse 1: Block McCloud]
I was Little Man Tate with straight A's. Couldn't wait for my payday
Step-pops was tryna say I hate my own lady
Ran with the locals, broke rules in Brooklyn, looking to lay vocals
Selling coke, thinking I'm so cool
Cutting out of school and breaking night. Huffing coolies and weed and taking flight
Two wrongs ain't make me right, so my
Rhymes declined. Last line I had, I sniffed it
Mind was mad lifted. Forgot that I was gifted
Caught selling. Mom's yelling made it hard to speak
Pops telling her I'm a villain, k**ing her ‘cause heart was weak
Played boss, lays laws that I can't obey
For the sake of my mom's heart breaking, I ran away
Now I'm homeless, roaming the streets in the rain and thunder
It's like a jungle. Sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I survived rubbing shoulders with the undead
I dropped a sheet and put a roof over my son's head
What?
[Hook: Sample from Ella Fitzgerald's “Anything Goes”] (x4)
Times have changed
[Verse 2: Pumpkinhead]
Yo, yo, yo
Since the day Adam bit on the apple, the world fell victim to the jackal
Loud voices of widows in the chapel
My devils cackle and tackle my brain into chains
My crew aims for the fame, avoiding the flames
Nowadays, we stick away from these dope fiend dames
Hurting their veins with purple rain, turning insane
With cracked teeth ‘cause crack's cheap on these crack streets
s**ing dick, deep in fat jeeps with the black seats
Actually, my mind cause words on rap sheets
I stack treats thickly packed like Pamela Lee
It's a world gone mad. Call a psychiatrist
In my abyss, you get greeted by iron flying fists
You get hit and want to spit—try and you miss
Get back on the boat. Then I seen you cry on the ship
If I die, I die now—don't want to die when I'm rich
I pick the plants of power, dividing my hits, high in the whip
Drop by on your clique, slide in the clip
With black-talon raps dying to rip. My mind is equipped
With all the latest technology, taking over like colonies
Puffing botanies of collie weed—it's my policy
Holy like the Dalai Lama. I got the shottie if you want to do my body drama
My aura is my body armor
Rap scholars is like piranhas in these black water harbors
Times have changed, f**er
[Hook: Sample from Ella Fitzgerald's “Anything Goes”] (x4)
Times have changed
[Verse 3: Icon]
Yo, yo, yo
This ghetto life changed me. Feeling like the white man hang me
Where we die for the color printed on our hanky
Where we die right in front of our moms
I wrote a letter to The Pentagon—we getting it on
If that don't work, then we gon' dead ‘em with bombs
I hold enough chromes to disarm the president's guards
I realize only the wisest'll rise. Me and you, son, we'll fly to the skies
Five of us hang glide through Soviet lines
Eleven years old, ‘ready know the meaning of war
The beast with seven heads walking with the feet of a horse
Deep in my thoughts, paranoid, sleep with a cross
Kamikaze style, running out with meat from the stores
It's iller than that—too many people k**ing for crack
This ghetto life is trife—too many thoughts to spit on a track
And it troubles my soul to live where we rumble with po
It ain't our fault the walls of Babylon are crumbling slow
And the prophecies known, foretold by the prophets are old
And now, forever, we'll shine like metropolis gold
f** an Illuminati. We out to body Rudolph Giuliani
Where God forgave me ‘cause my murder done have proved divinely
[Hook: Sample from Ella Fitzgerald's “Anything Goes”] (x8)
Times have changed