Yasiin Bey - Mathematics (Freddie Joachim Remix) lyrics

[Mos Def] Booka-booka-booka-booka-booka-booka Ha hah You know the deal It's just me yo Beats by Su-Primo for all of my peoples Negroes and latinos and even the gringos Yo, check it one for Charlie Hustle Two for Steady Rock Three for the fourth coming live, future shock It's five dimensions Six senses Seven firmaments of heaven to hell 8 Million Stories to tell Nine planets faithfully keep in orbit With the probable tenth The universe expands length The body of my text poses extra strength Power-lifting powerless up Out of this towering inferno My ink so hot it burn through the journal I'm blacker than midnight on Broadway and Myrtle Hip-Hop past all your tall social hurdles Like the nationwide projects Prison-industry complex Broken gla** wall better keep your alarm set Streets too loud to ever hear freedom ring Say evacuate your sleep It's dangerous to dream But you chain cats get they CHA-POW Who dead now k**ing fields need blood to graze the cash cow It's a number game But sh** don't add up somehow Like I got, sixteen to thirty-two bars to rock it But only 15% of profits, ever see my pockets like Sixty-nine billion in the last twenty years Spent on national defense But folks still live in fear like Nearly half of America's largest cities Is one-quarter black That's why they gave Ricky Ross all the crack Sixteen ounces to a pound, twenty more to a key A five minute sentence hearing and you no longer free 40% of Americans own a cell phone So they can hear Everything that you say when you ain't home I guess, Michael Jackson was right, "You Are Not Alone" Rock your hardhat black cause you in the Terrordome Full of hard n***as, large n***as, dice tumblers Young teens and prison greens facing life numbers Crack mothers, crack babies and AIDS patients Young bloods can't spell But they could rock you in PlayStation This new math is whipping motherf**ers a** You wanna know how to rhyme You better learn how to add It's mathematics [Chorus] [?] [Mos Def] Yo, it's one universal law But two sides to every story Three strikes and you be in for life Mandatory Four MC's murdered in the last four years I ain't trying to be the fifth one The millennium is here Yo it's 6 Million Ways to Die From the seven deadly thrills Eight-year olds getting Found with 9 mill's It's 10 P.M., where your seeds at? What's the deal He on the hill puffin krill To keep they belly filled Light in the a** with heavy steel Sights on the pretty sh** in life Young soldiers trying to earn they next stripe When the average minimum wage is $5.15 You best believe you gotta find a new ground to get cream The white unemployment rate, is nearly more than triple for black So front-liners got they gun in your back Bubbling crack Jewel theft and robbery to combat poverty And end up in the global jail economy Stiffer stipulations attached to each sentence Budget cutbacks but increased police presence And even if you get out of prison still living Join the other five million under state supervision This is business, no faces just lines and statistics From your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits The system break man child and women into figures Two columns for who is, and who ain't n***as Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings But you push too hard, even numbers got limits Why did one straw break the camel's back? Here's the secret: The million other straws underneath it It's all mathematics [Chorus]