Brother Ali - The Trap lyrics

[Intro: Speaking] Judge not lest ye shall be judged. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone Until you have walked a mile in a man's shoes you can not judge a man [Verse One] What if that was you born to the left of the tracks? The place where you grow up is infested with rats The Army didn't segregate that Everybody who could, left in a snap And never looked back And since they've been gone they haven't invested in jack Left very few ways for you to generate scratch Your school is under funded, your teachers over worked And when it comes to text books you gotta settle for scraps And seldom when trapped The wall pressed to your back Can we ever think of anything except to react If you ain't Einstein, you just a regular cat And your self preservation is a medical fact Then done set you up a helluva trap They put bait in your face and if you take it then you never get back What kind of set up is that? The justice is just that Just us, a public defender, his head up his a** You're headed to a place where slavery is legal And you being a human ain't no relevant fact And if you play nice You might escape with your life And get a release date but don't celebrate yet! Cause they're sending you back To where you fell threw the cracks Except now it's harder because you got a felony rap Might get an interview but your resume's jacked And the second they find out you got an F it's a wrap In the 70's cats, from the ghetto made rap Unifying worldwide, we all felt the impact But the company that stole out, they sellin' it back Stripped all down to, really, the irrelevant crap And the message is that If you poor you black Throw some shells up in the gat and go and sell you some crack Then you'll have shiny things and money in stacks And Destiny's Child will want to f** you for that Look how the f**in' deck has been stacked And the effect it can have on you feelin' you never had a chance Don't be judging people in a second at a glance Or act superior because the blessings that you had God don't prefer you, He's testing your a** With the benefit you're givin', you're expected to pa** Take a look in the mirror Reflect on that Just might be a hypocrite reflecting in the gla** With yo b**h a**!