| What they call you?
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| Red. |
| Red and I ain’t no punk
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| Detroit red, my name is Detroit red
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| Detroit red, my name is Detroit red
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| Detroit red, my name is Detroit red
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| Grew up in the world full of thieves, son of Earl and Louise
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| Yearning for greed, I was working for me
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| My Pops died on the train tracks
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| Whites left em laid flat
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| Cause my Momma fell in love with a man with a shade black
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| Probably got his brain cracked, scared as a little kid
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| Thought about law school, but that’s not what niggas did
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| Cracka ass teacher thought carpentry was what it is
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| Still smarter than them little bastards, I was a wiz
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| My hair was red, no kind of coloring
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| All natural, tried to be the black Ed Sullivan
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| Moved in with Ella, I was clubbing it
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| Shining shoes suffering, so I started hustling
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| Train job, wasn’t cutting it
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| I couldn’t fuck with it
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| Serving white people wasn’t me I had enough of it
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| Fell in love with Harlem, cool cats not squares
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| Old country boys in green suits and conked hair
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| I got drunk, smoked weed, ran numbers
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| Give me some skin daddio, I was a bad brother
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| Kalamazoo had my mother in the padded gutter
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| She went crazy when that man dumped her
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| Black hustler, turned down the army being in the packed bunker
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| Dreams of a Cadillac bumper, I was a gat sucker
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| Used to run packaged errands
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| Thinking back, I blame it all on my lack of parents
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| Midwest boy in Harlem with a whack appearance
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| Gambling pennies and tips into racketeering
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| Hanging out uptown, Sammy master pimpin'
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| Red fox cleaning kitchens he was stacking dishes
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| Man listen, I got fired from smalls
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| I had to prove a point
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| Selling reefers using joints, everybody knew Detroit
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| Man, I was on the cops hit list, never sent list
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| Was senseless, moved to 110th I still sell sticks
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| Drop offs because I had the pigs searching my
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| This was way before Bill Russell was on the Celtics
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| Reefer money moved slow, started doing stick ups
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| Cocaine I had to sniff to cure the hiccups
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| Had to pick the four fifth up without a mix up
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| Sammy tried to kill me because I smacked his bitch up
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| Kept gambling strongly
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| numbering, getting paid from Archie
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| The west Indian man with good memory
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| He’ll kill you in a heartbeat
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| Left Harlem because he tried to spark me, wrongly
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| Got back to Boston, and me and shorty was rocking
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| Sophia and the sister was down and we started plotting
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| Brought another guy named Rudy into the projects
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| Had to set him straight so we knew that was a problem
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| Wasn’t afraid to die, started willin'
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| Emptied out my gun with the bullets I had inside it
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| Silence, it covered the room, I had it quiet
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| Put a slug back in the gun like a deposit
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| Let the cylinder spin then put it to my noggin
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| Popped it, nothing came out I started smiling
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| Did it again, they was astonished
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| But little did they know I had the bullet in my pocket
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| Then we started robbing, handbags and jewelry boxes
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| Going into the houses, sneakier than the mouse gets
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| Money out of wallets, clothes out of closets
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| Even when they snored lifted up arms and took watches
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| Did it for a while, until shit got obnoxious
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| Door started knocking, we got caught by the copers
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| Judge gave me 10, but not because of my chargers
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| But cuz Sophia and the sister looked like his daughters
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| 2 year crime turned into a dime cuz of racism
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| I hate prison cuz I see it as a slave system
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| It’s all good, should be painless, shameless
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| As long as Boston and Harlem know what my name is |