Don't Hate My Grind - Dead Prez, The Evil Genius DJ Green Lantern, Bun B

I’m close to the edge

Don’t push me

Yo, this recession got a nigga losing calories

Can’t get no food in your stomach without that salary

Gotta come up by any means, my mentality

Don’t wanna dream about it, gotta bring it to reality

On my side of town, this ain’t new, this is life

If you ain’t lived it then you have no idea what it’s like

To go to bed with excruciating pain in your abdomen

So hungry you can’t sleep, you just lay awake imagining

Big dreams, big schemes, big risk takin'

Penitentiary waiting for me if I’m mistaken

Paying dues, can’t lose, failure’s not an option

The only way is up when your coming from the bottom

Tired of watching all these companies get bailed out

And the only thing that poor people get is another jail house

That’s why ain’t nothing patriotic in me

For they system my heart is empty

Don’t hate my grind

We gotta make a way

Though things is getting tougher everyday

Where there’s a hustle there’s a way

Don’t hate my grind

We gotta find a way

Though things is getting rougher everyday

Where there’s a hustle there’s a way

Don’t hate…

Another day up in this servant concrete village

Trying to live in a world where they just rob and pillage

I’m waking up in the clothes that I west to sleep in

I pick up my pistol and I get back out on the creep

And I see the same bullshit I just saw the day befo'

Drugs and the murders and my people trying to play me yo

I ain’t about that bullshit and they already know it

I don’t want to have to kill but still I can’t show it

So I mean mug them, screw face them, and I twist up

Hand on my strap while I’m balling my other fist up

Pass me the piff and roll me another spliff up

Cause one way or another my nigga I’m finsta lift up

Above the troubles and the stress and the mess

I’m just hoping that the good Lord is choosing me to bless

I’m tired of this world trying to fuck me like a pussy

My nigga I’m close to the edge don’t push me

Don’t hate my grind

We gotta make a way

Though things is getting tougher everyday

Where there’s a hustle there’s a way

Don’t hate…

Ain’t no retirement from this profession

Plan B is the Smith & Wesson

It’s reliable

No 401k for this runaway slave

Fuck tomorrow when we hungry today

But you don’t here me though

We be surviving off of Cheerios and videos

We get a dose of the high-fructose and there we go

A recipe for the grind, AKA the struggle

AKA the muscle, AKA the hustle

It’s hard enough for us to trust one another

When I see you as a threat, not my sister or my brother

I hope one day we put this all behind us

And resurrect the grind museum for memories to remind us

I feel like Melle Mel on «The Message»

I’m close to the edge don’t push me

I’m trying to hold my head but its hard out here for a pimp man

The cemetery’s waiting for you if you slip man

Another day of oppression

They call it possession, it’s media misdirection

But you know what get’s greeted by repression?

A long overdue, much needed insurrection

It’s a cold world, but I’m a grown man

And a grown man needs power in his own hands

Ain’t no sitting around, waitin' complainin'

Unless your in love with the plantation