[Verse 1: Common]

These are the words of a believer

Achiever, leader of the globe

Feeding souls of those in need

I bleed the blood of the struggle

Walking over troubled puddles

Hustles in my chest, no hustle no progress

Extremities of life and it's process

Birth of a son, death of another

With love I caress both mothers

And told 'em, who’s in control is the one that's above us

I walk where money talks and love stutters

Body language of a nation going through changes

The young become dangerous, pain gets spent into anger

Anger gets sent through the chamber

It’s tough when your own look like strangers

We are the sons of gangsters and stone rangers

If he could how would Ernie Barnes paint us?

Look at the picture, hard not to blame us

But time forgives in the Chi where the young die often

Do they end up in a coffin because we haven’t taught them?

Is it what we talking, we really ain't walking?

Dues hustlers pay, how much did it cost 'em?

Find myself on the same corner that we lost ‘em

Real talking, in they ear like a Walkman

Thoughts spin around the corner to the world

When I see them, I see my baby girl

Believe!

There are times...

[Verse 2: Common]

The lord lives among us, the younguns hunger

Become a means to get it by any ways nece-

-ssary, under pressure, children feeling lesser

With the steel up on the dresser killin' will aggressors

Destiny’s children survivors, soldiers

In front of buildings they eyes look older

Hard to see blessings in the violent culture

Face against weapons, sirens, holsters

That ain't the way that Langston Hughes wrote us

Soul controllers on the shoulders of Moses and Noah

We go from being Precious to Oprah

Cultivated to overcome ever since we came overseas

Today and the way that you can see we determined

Solar keeps burning, shawty’s know to keep learning

Lesson’s in our life are like stripes that we earning

Took gramps' advice that Christ is returning

Like a thief in the night, I write the beacons of light

For those of us in dark alleys and parched valleys

Street hits spark rallies of the conscience conquerors of a contest

That seems beyond us, even through the unseen

I know that God watches

From one King's dream, he was able to Barack us

The prophets, nothing can stop us

Believe!

The prophets, nothing can stop us

Yo yo yo, yeah yeah yeah