[Intro: Dave Chappelle]

I didn't know he was taking me to the ghetto at first. I started looking out the window, I was like, "What the fuck? There was a gun store, gun store, liquor store, gun store. "Where the fuck you takin' me?!

[Verse 1]

You know the way it is, the roads are paved in piss

Downtown, hey that's where Satan is

And broken glass, too, and floatin' trash, too

The center of LA smells like open ass, whoo!

You meet the youngest girls with the oldest tattoos

And old women with no wisdom to pass you

You can ride around and take a stop in Chinatown

Or you can go and watch a bum fight title bout

Or you can just relax, or you can wonder most of the bums are black and got a strong love for crack

It's somethin' different, apartment buildings rats and roaches wouldn't live in

One bedroom, no kitchen

Comin' from nineteen-thirty, carpet's nice and dirty

Don't drink the tap water because you might get scurvy

Hepatitis, herpes, they pass it around

And don't slip there's a lot of broken glass on the ground

[Chorus]

Mother Earth's got a rash and they call it downtown

If you're knee-deep in trash, then you're probably downtown

Every car [?] in the streets of downtown

Everybody low on cash, LA city downtown

We're the ten, the 1-10 and the [?]

But the traffic's so bad, we take the side streets

We're the ten, the 1-10, and the [?]

Downtown, LA, let's go sightsee

[Verse 2]

Some buildings scrap the sky and freeways seem to fascinate the eye

And sometimes Skid Row makes me sigh

Everybody's high and beggin' for a dollar twenty-five

Tough time, they're hopin' to get by

I drop a little change, see I'd have be a stand-up comic to complain

About my awkward little pain

I walk on the terrain, I walk with the same

I've seen so many inner coffins without a grave

Some don't have a clue, but some can see it all from their office building view

There's women and children, too

Suckin' the stale air, don't get welfare

There's no home address, how the hell they can get mail there?

Twin towers, baby, my cousin's in jail there

Twenty-three hours a day he sits in a cell there

Well there, isn't that lovely, downtown in the summer-y, wonderful and ugly

[Chorus]

Mother Earth's got a rash and they call it downtown

If you're knee-deep in trash, then you're probably downtown

Every car [?] in the streets of downtown

Everybody low on cash, LA city downtown

We're the ten, the 1-10 and the [?]

But the traffic's so bad, we take the side streets

We're the ten, the 1-10, and the [?]

Downtown, LA, let's go sightsee