Joshua Bennett - Hip Hop lyrics

Even the greediest crack fiend Will still pop lock for free if you put on the right song Well forget his addiction only for a minute and reminisce About the taste of quarter waters sipped through innocent ten year old lips on 1989 Brooklyn brownstone steps He will remind you that the music is in all of us See I was twelve years old the first time I heard 2Pac Headphones blaring stories of guns and glory Unlike anything my suburban ears had ever heard I was addicted And the rhythm of the ba** drum was my smack So I smacked my veins Inject verses till my arms were covered with all the latest tracks Snorting lines of Kurtis Blow Until it all faded to black And I awoke to find a brand new jay-z album in my backpack Couldn't back track or fall back like where the past at So I skipped time You shaked dilla in my Dolorean and went past that See My daddy left So I had to write With my right and left Just to write the wrongs he'd left Check Like kings endangered during chess But I'm more like a queen Loud but I move in all directions or in any given beat I get deaf Move swiftly On corners where young men act obtuse Because they were never able to see life from the right angle So limited perspective renders their vision acute Hearts colder than forty-five degrees Never went to cla** So they skipped the first four letters of the alphabet and end lives with ease Breathe Remember that your heart is just a drum machine And that we are all hands in the same crowd All waves on the same frequency See we are hip-hop I am hip-hop I am the first bullet that hit Sean Bell I'm a crack pipe in a pregnant mothers hands A project building on fire A prison inmate writing the illest verse you ever heard from the gas ember I'm the handcuffs on his hands and the shackles on his mind I'm four little girls from a six in the little rock nine I'm three fifths human and five fifths warrior I'm a king No I'm Rodney King No I'm Martin Luther King crip walking on clouds with Malcolm X I'm Barack Obama Matter of fact I'm Barack Obamas grandson Trying to catch a cab in Manhattan I'm a Blood Throwing up my hood Rolling deep ready to k** a n***a I'm the Klu-Klux-Klan Throwing up my hood Rolling deep ready to k** a n***a A contradiction See hip-hop Is just like Halloween A worldwide mascarade where rappers display acts of buffoonery not seen since ma**'s days Because we used to be free But keep running back to bondage like backwards slaves who Gladly give up the rights to what we write in exchange for chains And so it's no wonder That after all this time the terms have remained exactly the same Because little black boys Just want to play the game Become super coons Who hip-hop from courts to court rooms Because rims Whether they're on cars or backboards All sound exactly the same to them So if you ask me what I love about this culture I would say everything and nothing That it has k**ed as many as it has saved That it has moved as many as it has paralyzed And that somewhere, in a back alley in the South Bronx That none of us will ever step foot in There is a crack addicted man Turntables in his eyes A song in his heart And a world That may never be ready… to listen