For the City - Phil the Agony, Talib Kweli

No one said it’d be easy

Living just for the city

I’m 'gon be alright (x2)

Cuz whatever I do

I’m gonna keep looking to you

Long as I’m on my grind

I’ll know I’ll make it by

Yo, money I’m down by law, we draw long arms

B-boy rock steady like Strong Arm

Shy by nature I gotta force to get my words out

But then I rock monkey bars like a ghetto work out

I ain’t beefin'

But I came up on these same streets and

I be seein' these people riding the train sleeping

Policemen reaching for they guns offering help

You get arrested and your choice is rehab or off in a cell

Now let me think: gotta do what you gotta to get by

Give me a cell 'cause in rehab you can’t get high

Now I can’t sit by

Watch my fam just die

Roaming the street while society romanticize

We, living like roaches saluting the black flag

Thieves in the night like the Ali Babas of Baghdad

Pack your guns and shoot the black hawks down

Asking «Who wanna back talk now?»

We pulled up and it’s quarter to eight

Ordered his plate

Got the whole town on lock from border to state

Hate pouring out of his pores

Defying the laws

Had the fat Cuban cigar bite in his jaws

Jaws are sharp — always had hammerheads circling

Bitch stop tough ass niggas had 'em Urkel-ing

Indent — he just want his 20 percent

Getting bent paying his rent

Lay in his tent

Popped out five in the morn'

Getting it on

While most of ya’ll still in bed and ain’t even yawn

He on the block hot

Pot holders holding his rock

That he boiled in pot

Spoiled his block

Mothers out four in the morn' waiting in line

Acting like Tita Divine

Is freeing they mind

Shots came rangin'

Old ladies started sangin'

Everybody in the hood started bangin'

The world we live in: scandalous ain’t it?

You could spray paint it on the wall

That’s for all of ya’ll

The fall of your regime

The rise of me and my team

It’s all love they owe us let’s redeem

Cadillac the contract

Bubble back where my mom’s at

You know a son go to war and combat

Yasser Arafat in track

The steady Aromatic is back

So get your Malcom X hats

Dust it off the rack

Like a Stevie Wonder 8-track

Agony, Kweli

Chemical, Ali

They probably waiting on us we hit heavy

The beautiful struggle, the Strong Arm Steady