Happy To Be Here

[female singer - repeat in background]

I'm just happy to be here!

[E40 over singer]

Hard times, the struggle

The ups and downs, the highs and the lows

You know just goin through it man, ghetto politics

Tryin to make a way out of no way

I was the oldest, so I had to be, the daddy of the family

Momma had to work three jobs, oooh

Feet stickin through my shoes, skid marks in my drawers

Garage sales and flea markets, we never shopped at malls

No dental plan, no medikit - we poor like rain

Colored folks think that castor oil cures everythang

Pork chops and chicken, we like our food fried

Hypertension, Prenavil pills and hydro-chlorizide

Some of my family still living, some of my family died

Health complications, natural causes and homicide

Just tryin to survive, nothin to lose but plenty to gain

Started hustlin, flea flickin and servin that candy cane

Put all my cars in my lady name, as a true hustler should

She had a 9 to 5, worked at Planned Parenthood

While I was in the hood, up to no good

with a hoodie over my head, tryin to outslick the feds

Or should I say cops, at this point in time I only had rocks

Went from a little a jelly jar up to a soup pot

The fast quarter my negro, don't want the slow nickel

I done seen yola the same color as peanut brittle

I done seen hella people relapse

I done seen my homey grandparents go back to crack

How sick is dat? Beggin my loved ones to send some pictures

Pray for me over the phone and read me some scriptures

Oooh; it's gloomy out here, dark days ahead

God got my back but the devil he want my head

[Chorus: D.D. Artis]

I'm just happy to be here right now

Lot of my folks been locked up or laid down

See I'm sayin I ain't shed no tears, no

But I'm just happy to be here

[E40]

Listen to this, oooooh

The devil-me side know that some of y'all done seen it

Somebody's momma washin her son or her daughter's bloodstain off the cement

Wrong place at the wrong time, infiltrators drop a dime

Mistaken identity, bullets start flyin

in every direction, hit a pregnant teen, she passed

But her baby live through a C-section

I know it sound foul and sound hecka rude, it ain't cool

But it go down like that sometime when you're funkin, and you're puttin down a move

We heartless and shrewd in this day and age, it ain't the same

Our parents need to beat us with a belt, like Poody Tang

I be high like an airplane

I be smokin and perkin, takin out anger and stress on the wrong person

Re-uppin and coppin turf an' just servin the soil block

Grittin tryin to put some gifts in my kid's Christmas stock'

Ooooh - pour out some liquor and shed a tear

For the homies that never made it and family that ain't here

[Chorus]

[D.D. Artis]

So happy

You know I'm happy to be

Said I'm happy, so happy just to be here

To beeeeeee, to beeeeeeeeeeee

To beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (I'm so happy)

(Oh I'm so happy)

I'm so happy to be, to beeeeeeee-heeeeeeeeee

To beeeeeeeee (to be here)