Portrait of the Artist as a Hood

Today I'm prepared to bring specific charges

against certain members working in an industry

that reaches into every household in the country

[Pete Nice]

Hoods is up so skills is up

It's a stick-up, so why'd you interrupt?

So such bust material cerebral

I'm eatin cereal with spoons sippin Cepacol

Daddy-O slipped me some cause my breath stank

White gold, but no accounts in Swiss banks

Think tanks once rolled on the city streets

I used to meet your moms between the sheets

Universe is versus hoods prospectus

True flam, flammin words on wax discus

So they dismiss this as vulgarity

And once laughed and pointed at the university

Some perk without skills and push a pen

I send surreal scenes where you never been

Looked out, gave you three strikes, you struck out

Pop shit with the 3rd, knock your fronts out

Blew your blunts out you wings stuck up your ass

Gassed you up then slap you with my staff

I seen your skins like to go to the motels

but your ass won't know to the hotels

Cause a lip is zipped, I paint pictures

A portrait, a self far from ??

My discussion of impression ain't ignorance

So don't label the hoods on appearances

You never thought that a gangsta could talk sense

But this artifice flipped, your beans is spent

Took your papes out your pocket and just stood out

The focus, the portrait of the artist as a hoods-up

[MC Serch]

Portrait planned it back in the days

Young strays, posted at the L.Q. on Friday's

Waitin for Dice to give the go ahead

Hawkin 50 cent, puttin heads to bed

for a herringbone hear the tune of the Audio Two

Milk was chillin as I chilled in the back room

Listen to snaps, cuts by Scoob and Scrap

Union Square, to tear up the KRS tracks

Torn up by the Kent, the Clark Dark

as the brothers try to spark

We knocked boots, and the boots got knocked

Three A.M. and it was off to The Rooftop

Hip-Hop Starski, the Masters of Ceremony

Ka-ka-cracked out, was hookin property

Five A.M. it was the S&S

A hundred and forty-fifth street, down on Lennox

Starchild made all the hoes squeal

For a dollar crackheads Armor-Alled your wheels

Whippin home in the sunshine, fun time

but now you can't find

clubs like this that kept the music in the street

And pop rap couldn't get a dime to eat

Yo, they're makin mills, but what about the hood?

A parking lot, where the Latin Quarter stood!

A landmark marked in the cranium

but now I bring it back in front of packed stadiums

Picture painted with the goals and the good

The portrait of an artist as a hood

[S] Yo Pete man, yo where the hoods at Pete?

[P] Yo the hoods is in Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx

Money-makin Strong Island

[S] Yo can't forget Newark New Jersey

Philly, D.C.

[P] From Detroit to Mobile Alabama

Memphis Tennesse Cleveland

[S] Yo, money-makin Miami, Chicago

East St. Louis got crazy hoods

[P] Oakland Compton Watts wearin the hoods

[S] Yo true indeed, Louisville

Boostin Houston got CRAZY hoods

[P] New Orleans, Seattle

[S] North Carolina cannot forget about Atlanta

Shockmaster ?? got crazy hoods

listenin to his program

[P] And the hoods are holdin their joint

And they're out

[S] True indeed.. SEE-YA!