Knockturnal - Talib Kweli

It’s all good

Do or die

I hear ya before I come out that good working

With not that ease I hear shooting and what not

You know, what you hear, pop po-pop pop

And I’m like you

Come on, don’t be late

You ain’t going out in that

As I look to you

Brother gotta make a living

The vampires make you fear the night

That kind of talk give them evil spirits life

She on the track like she waiting for her tears to dry

Listen real close you can hear the city cry

You hear it right?

Its like every night the city die

We the blood, we give the city life

Living the city life

The city get restless when the sun goes down

The words get heated and the guns go *pow*

I used to joke and smile, now everyone’s so foul

He grab the heat before he leave up out the front door now

Check the weather, what’s the forecast

Tryna make it rain, lookin' for more cash

Little man, ain’t got no parents, who you gon' follow

When your role models send you to the store for a cold bottle

And you come back and see 'em in cuffs will be enoug

To hate police, and define manhood as being tough

Sneakers scuffed and them toes turnt up

This shit is aggravating

It’s hard to put holes in denim, this ain’t a fashion statement

Yelling out «thats my car»

So fascinated by material gain, it’s already ours in our imagination

The matrix nation of supremacy is masturbation

The master race should make you want to mash your face and run

Right up in somebody gates

But where the fuck the safe

Small, quiet dude in the back like «I know just the place»

He flash a toothy grin the jakes love to hate

And then he flashed the gun he had tucked in his waist

The conversations, son, I’m hearing are overbearing

Ain’t no preparing for how much the hood be oversharing

(Word)

The night time, always the right time

When your blood is what’s flowing through the school-to-prison pipeline

The vampires make you fear the night

That kind of talk give them evil spirits life

She on the track like she waiting for her tears to dry

Listen real close you can hear the city cry

You hear it right?

Its like every night the city die

We the blood, we give the city life

Living the city life

When you ain’t got a pot to piss

Everybody on the block is your competition

Police all in your pocket, you’re forced to forfeit

When your espionage is corporate, that means you got an office

Instead arrested for the petty theft

Expected to apologise for every breath

A warrior stood in the face of many deaths

But since they colonized us are there any left

He in the streets like he ain’t got a home

Writing a poem to the beat of the sobs and moans

Ran into Joan, skin chocolate as a Toblerone

Clickety-clack of stilettos on wet cobblestones

Streetlights illuminate how truly dark it is

The block is a college, you got a degree in marketing

A doctorate in swallowing, this pimping paid her scholarships

She poppin' out her tits, 'cos they pay her to be provocative

Broke niggas tryna holla tho (holla tho)

But they ain’t got no dollars though

It sound like, Imma hit a lick anyday

So fuck you bitch, she don’t look that good anyway

(You don’t even look good anyway)

Since when is pettiness a virtue?

Cops circle the block, they went from stop

And frisk to stop and merc you

Smoking dark purple in a crop circle

Fast life is not to ride the same got you

The vampires make you fear the night

That kind of talk give them evil spirits life

She on the track like she waiting for her tears to dry

Listen real close you can hear the city cry

You hear it right?

Its like every night the city die

We the blood, we give the city life

Living the city life