Caught In A Hustle

[verse 1]

They say the odds against me, are crooked and impossible

Like i was born with a hole in my heart is an obstacle

I was left to die by the doctors, in the children's hospital

But i never lose hope, success is psychological

The world is volatile and the street is my education

Shaping the nation, like the blueprint of a mason

While shawshank record deals get you raped on occasion

So i'm focused on my economic situation

I'm like the little kids on tv that dig through the trash

I hustle regardless of the way you talk shit and laugh

A lot of niggaz drop science but they dont know the math

Because their mind is narrower than the righteous path

It's funny how on the block niggaz will kill you for cash

But never raise the gun and cry out "freedom at last"

The cold war is over but the world is still gettin colder

Atlas walking through the projects with the hood on my shoulders

I would like to raise my children to grow to be soldiers

But then the general, would decide when their life would be over

So i work hard until my personality split

Like the black panthers, into the bloods and the crips

They said i would never be shit, but now i sit and reminice

Like yeshua ben yusef flippin through genesis

Ignorance is venemous, and it murders the soul

Spreading like a virus running rampant, but out of control

[hook]

So if i should ever fall and get caught in a hustle

Let them know that i died while i fought in a struggle

From the hoodrats to the rich kids lost in a bubble

Spray painting on the streets and at the subway tunnels

Write it down and remember that we never gave in

The mind of a child is where the revolution begins

So if the solution has never been to look in yourself

How is it that you expect to find it anywhere else

[verse 2]

Immortal technique in the streets, back on the hustle

Cause three strikes will get you life for stuffin cracks in a duffle

Upstate behind steel gates intact in the scuffle

Razor blades stuck on the side of pencils, hacked to your muscle

But the emptiness is what bleeds you to death when it cuts you

And its the lawyers, not the inmates scheming to fuck you

Trying to fight the system from inside, eventually corrupts you

But thats what you get when you put a corporation above you

And it's the people that love you that seem to hurt you the most

Sometimes when they die you find yourself cursing their ghost

But you make success, nobody delivers your fate

Sometimes you give and you take

Since prehistoric vertibrates, crawled out of the lakes

And thats the truth about life

Or to do it to ghetto and your car, rims, and your ice

Because even though we survived through the struggle that made us

We still look at ourselves through the eyes of people that hate us

But i'm going to make it regardless of the trumped up charges

And semi-automatic barrages, that empty the cartridge

Post-traumatically scar kids that try to be brave

Because niggaz backstab each other just to try to get paid

Turn cannibal like nights during the crusades

Afraid of responsibility; addicted to greed

Beating their girls purposefully losing a seed

As if we were bound to the destiny we used to recieve

[hook]

I used to wonder (i used to wonder) about people who don't believe in themselves

But then i saw the way that they portrayed us to everyone else

That cursed us, then only see the worst in ourselves

Blind to the fact the whole time we were hurting ourselves

I used to wonder (i used to wonder) about people who don't believe in themselves

But then i saw the way that they portrayed us to everyone else

That cursed us, then only see the worst in ourselves

Blind to the fact the whole time we were hurting ourselves

I used to wonder [echo]