| You know them ones?
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| I know a grown man said:
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| Don’t waste time doing the crime if it’s already been done You know?
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| Don’t waste time doing the crime if it’s already been done
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| Do you know how real that is?
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| The feds know these things, you know
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| You got to be smarter than that
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| That’s why I’m here, you know?
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| Not just to play tunes
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| Like but to show man certain things init
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| You can rise up and be better like
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| You can like, you know, like advance yourself init
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| You ain’t gotta be doing these like fucked and these little things no more
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| Like you can move up and move onwards
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| You know them ones?
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| I’m chatting too much here
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| Let me just play that fucking tune
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| For me and many others on the streets:
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| Friendship was based on who’s there for you
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| And that includes having your boy’s back no matter what
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| I personally saw it as a way of showing love and keeping it real
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| For most peeps on the street
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| When someone had your back it created a silent special bond
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| For some of us, that bond was like a life insurance policy
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| And even though we became tight, I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure they had
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| my back til their end
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| There’s too many fake hard Suge Knights nowadays
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| I couldn’t tell who was real and who wasn’t
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| When it came down to it
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| I realized that the only person I could depend on one hundred percent and be
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| was me
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| Trust is a luxury I can’t afford
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| Betrayal is something I can’t ignore
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| If I’m honest
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| I didn’t even know what the full meaning of keeping it real was anymore
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| I assumed it meant:
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| Always backing a manor’s beef
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| Never snitch
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| Never touch a brother’s wifey
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| And never snake-knife
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| I couldn’t understand why most of the mans in my party found it so hard to
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| maintain these simple guidelines
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| We never had [?}
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| At this time
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| I found a lot of realness had come from listening to one N.Y. rapper called
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| Cormega
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| His tunes had me in the zone
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| Especially when I had spliff to hand
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| My favourite album at this time had to be
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| Cormega: the realness
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| I could listen to that album from the first track all the way through
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| The interlude alone had me pulling out the track over and over
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| Yo, what you doing niggas?
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| You know what I’m saying?
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| You gotta know what to expect
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| Cause everybody’s your man when things is getting right
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| Uh, but what about when things are getting wrong?
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| Then, then in the first verse you killed it
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| Ask yourself:
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| Am I your man?
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| Would I die for you or by your hand?
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| If I go broke, would you divide your gram?
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| Put me in your plans?
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| Hold me down in the heat with my shit jams
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| And then the chorus says it all
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| If I died, would you cry?
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| Hey, nah
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| This type of tune here
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| You wanna rise up on the fucking Markus Garvey
|
| You know them ones
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| It’s one of them type of tunes
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| You know them ones |