From the moment of my conception

The foot of my fate using the effort of every muscle he could in his frame

To put on his weight, to push on the gas peddle

Propellin me here, to be the cat you might’ve slept on

Who deads your career

Is destiny. All I had to do was stay alive

Biding my time waitin for a sign to arrive

It came in the form of L.L.’s tape

The one that had the same title as the picture on the front of the case

9 years young in ’88, Rob Base

Easy E, Cube, Ren & Dre, G and Kane

Hammer on the first lp, EPMD

Nike, Reebok, Fila

Scrape a little tar off the curb, hold the needle on your spinning top

Dubbin the cassettes on my double deck boom box

Funny 3-quarter length tube socks

Run to the Koreans on the ave for a stop watch

Until the next thing; black, red & green

Black power, and Islam and talks by Farrakhan

Pete Rock and the Mecca Don

Groomed in the game by an array of all of the ultimate in rap ever

In any era to do it. ’92: Redman, ’93: Black Moon

I’m into high school, mad puerto ricans

In came the Wu-Tang, everything changed

The world of hip hop watched Rza make 7 straight classics

Nas shredded my dome with Illmatic

I spent ’95 married to the Mobb

When a mixtape used to be a Maxell U-R

S&S, Tony Touch, Clue and Doo Wop

Me and mike used to swap lps in class

He let me hold both Jeru and Gang Starr

We’d bang a joint like 3 days and trade off

When the real heads owned and shaped the heart and the soul of the art

That we authored and sold

Until them devils strong armed the control

And now it’s all corporate, but I ain’t in the pulpit

I just remember Tribe. I just remember walkin to the store in the summertime

To cop Stakes Is High

I just remember Com’ Sense, Bootcamp Clik

Black scully hats and my first pair of timbs

I saw rappers locked up, saw them get free

I saw rappers lose their careers over beef

I saw rappers on coke, crack, weed and d

I saw them in their prime die younger than me

I saw Biggie die on the eve of Life After Death

To see him alive in the video is eerie inside

Murdered by his own people. I guess ‘Pac wasn’t enough

I thought that all we got is us

The world of hip hop had hardly even gotten up

Then Big L took a frickin bullet in the brain a couple of weeks past

When my born day came, and Freaky Tah from the Lost Boyz got slain

And Big Pun’s health caught up and his heart failed him

We sat angered ‘cause we ain’t have the power to save him

But all things come to an end. Spring, summer to fall

Winter to spring and summer again

Now I’m hearin hip hop is dust in the wind

6 feet deep covered in dirt and dead under my timbs

Like it was one of our peeps, so we keep the essence alive

‘cause that’s the way that some of us live

I feel the hunger in my stomach and ribs

I’d rather starve for my craft, than slob for the madness

And it’s a couple cats holdin it down

But in the mainstream current overflow and they drown