Lyrics For the City - Phil the Agony, Talib Kweli

For the City

No one said it’d be easy
Living just for the city
I’m 'gon be alright (x2)
Cuz whatever I do
I’m gonna keep looking to you
Long as I’m on my grind
I’ll know I’ll make it by
Yo, money I’m down by law, we draw long arms
B-boy rock steady like Strong Arm
Shy by nature I gotta force to get my words out
But then I rock monkey bars like a ghetto work out
I ain’t beefin'
But I came up on these same streets and
I be seein' these people riding the train sleeping
Policemen reaching for they guns offering help
You get arrested and your choice is rehab or off in a cell
Now let me think: gotta do what you gotta to get by
Give me a cell 'cause in rehab you can’t get high
Now I can’t sit by
Watch my fam just die
Roaming the street while society romanticize
We, living like roaches saluting the black flag
Thieves in the night like the Ali Babas of Baghdad
Pack your guns and shoot the black hawks down
Asking «Who wanna back talk now?»
We pulled up and it’s quarter to eight
Ordered his plate
Got the whole town on lock from border to state
Hate pouring out of his pores
Defying the laws
Had the fat Cuban cigar bite in his jaws
Jaws are sharp — always had hammerheads circling
Bitch stop tough ass niggas had 'em Urkel-ing
Indent — he just want his 20 percent
Getting bent paying his rent
Lay in his tent
Popped out five in the morn'
Getting it on
While most of ya’ll still in bed and ain’t even yawn
He on the block hot
Pot holders holding his rock
That he boiled in pot
Spoiled his block
Mothers out four in the morn' waiting in line
Acting like Tita Divine
Is freeing they mind
Shots came rangin'
Old ladies started sangin'
Everybody in the hood started bangin'
The world we live in: scandalous ain’t it?
You could spray paint it on the wall
That’s for all of ya’ll
The fall of your regime
The rise of me and my team
It’s all love they owe us let’s redeem
Cadillac the contract
Bubble back where my mom’s at
You know a son go to war and combat
Yasser Arafat in track
The steady Aromatic is back
So get your Malcom X hats
Dust it off the rack
Like a Stevie Wonder 8-track
Agony, Kweli
Chemical, Ali
They probably waiting on us we hit heavy
The beautiful struggle, the Strong Arm Steady