Chorus 2x:

Yeah, this is how we live

This how we survive

And this is how we do

This is how we do

Verse 1:

I call home where my living room window's facing the vandals

Front row seat to the scandals

I was never thrown a pitch I can't handle

My boots is ragged, but I ain't reached the point to trade 'em for sandals

Gazing at the mandarin skies, realized

That my hearts still thumping for reasons beyond my eyes

Composer of theses unflawed rhymes, it's a tall climb

So like a hot headed killer, reaching at all times

Keep pursuing, best to move or you'll get left around

In the gutter where they slumber with their chest to ground

Stalk the alleys where the junkies and the pest are found

And shorties greet ya with the heater, pull ya necklace down

So like Bump say, "Move Around"

Or you can sink in the water if you choose to drown

The streets is a trade, listen to that tool sound

They working overtime hours like a fool now

Chorus 2x

Verse 2:

I'm from the city where they filmed Cooley High

L trains be screaming when they move through the sky

Some wonder why it's hard to see the stars at night

But it's easy to see former hoop stars kissing the pipe

Former lives - they snatched quarters off backboards

Now they're reduced to begging for quarters in front of stores

Headed for Armageddon, thugs are semi-religious

Crosses tatted on bodies while they hustle relentless

My defense is the music, untainted in this septic tank

My methods ain't the best for coping but I guess it ain't

Worse than fiends paying twice to inject the pain

Or pistols held to the temple to push death in the brain

We got Arabs at the corner, Koreans at the strip malls

Africans on the court playing basketball

Indians that ain't native running the gas stations

And Irish men with walkie talkies on the block hatin'

Colorful portraits when I step on my doorstep

Survival and poverty got me knowing why the Lord wept

They say the ends is justified if it means eating

We be repenting so long until our knees bleeding

Chorus 2x