[Chorus 1a:]

Turn the lights off, they done shut the club down

Shut the club down, shut the, shut the club down

Turn the lights off, they done shut the club down

Shut the club down, shut the, shut the club down

[Verse 1:]

The schoolyard reeks of sewage, broken pipes, broken promise

The thin man staggers lucid for this time of night

Drying vomit dangles from the beard, step mumbles, shuffles trip

But the trajectory is clear, he’s headed for the covered steps

Tut tut, it looks like rain, he remembers A. A. Milne and

Each time the sky’s this kind of gray, that or his favorite film

Gene Kelly leaping technicolor through the fray

And feeling glorious the story is an allegory

For his days, but night is coming now

Files snap, aluminum sounds vibrant slap as

Drops descend on tall cans, it’s all hands on deck

To chase the pain away, dealers rocking parkas

With plenty pockets for product, the money horrors

The logic and babies holler from colic

The symphony is tectonic, it shifts as the Earth is settling

Precious metals are mined and a million mines have been meddling

With time in the hopes of getting a golden noose for the neck

Golden goose from a fairy tale shitting  Fabergé eggs

Here snitches shit bricks then quick to talk pig latin

That black dart too slick for that kid tapping the window

While looking over his shoulder, stop looking over your shoulder

You’re never caught from behind as long as you keep moving forward

They long for the sleep like they mortal

Be zombies but they got this portal and their

Minds and their molecules get rewired

Every trip they’ve taken through time

And they tripping nightly, the blacks of the eyes igniting

The pits in the backyard biting, the cats in the trashcan fighting

The feeling of guns peeling like bells in a telltale reeling

Of bodies losing they feeling and falling down in a ceiling

It’s black from the smoke that’s rising, the scent is just so enticing

The scent is a small price for the right to live out your vices now

[Chorus 1b:]

Turn the lights off, they done shut the club down

Shut the club down, shut the, shut the club down

And every night after the club, it goes down

Plenty, plenty more rounds, bodies, bodies on the ground

[Verse 2:]

On Broadway or Main Street they all stumble out

To a dozen pairs of hands pulling bottles from they mouths

How these Harley’s walk now, everybody pass out

In the backseat of the taxi, so they never heard a sound

[Chorus 2a:]

It’s the city or the seedy and you only see one

And it all looked gritty when it all begun

But this shit has got to balance on the barrel of a gun

All the money in the world ain’t gonna stop

None of that gangsta shit, that gangsta shit

The whole world loving that gangsta shit

Can’t change this shit, it’s dangerous

But it really ain’t nothing to a gangster

[Verse 3:]

Bitch what you know about that don’t act

Like a newby knew d-boys get jack

What you need is a new jack swing and a new toolie

Discerning taste for the bass like a foodie whore

Or these Coolie High when it’s on the step

Stepped on dope is a safety net, and the dope fiends cry

But they don’t regret, everyone go out get high til they

[Chorus 1c:]

Turn the lights off, they done shut the club down

Shut the club down, shut the, shut the club down

Why you fighting all the shit that make the world go ‘round

World go round, world, world go ‘round

[Chorus 1a:]

Turn the lights off, they done shut the club down

Shut the club down, shut the, shut the club down

Turn the lights off, they done shut the club down

Shut the club down, shut the, shut the club down

[Chorus 2b:]

It’s the city or the seedy and you only see one

And it all looked gritty when it all begun

But this shit has got to balance on the barrel of a gun

All the money in the world ain’t gonna stop

None of that gangsta shit, that gangsta shit

The whole world loving that gangsta shit

Can’t change this shit, it’s dangerous

But it really ain’t nothing to a gangster

Got the twenties and the fifties wrapped up all the old ones

Two for twenty, five for fifty, you could move a couple tons

You could put it in the blood, or you could put it in the lungs

But whatever you cough up, remember that it all begun

With that gangsta shit, that gangsta shit

The whole world loving that gangsta shit

Can’t change this shit, it’s dangerous

But it really ain’t nothing to a gangster