(with John Legend, feat. Malik Yusef)
[Malik Yusef]
You know you ghetto boy, when you got a face, with a scar
And yo' highest aspirations is a place, and a car
Shorties pull out and bussssst, like a money shot
Now he on the run, he hot
And he hurtin his Granny and she the only one he got
The hood so shady
You give up hope, of ever even tryin to find a sunny, spot-
-light, they caught him at the stop-
-light, but if he woulda run that yellow
Then he coulda, run the globe
But insteed, with speed
They put one in the middle of his frontal, lobe
like a unicorn
I'm just tryin to keep you, informed
To my little ghetto soldiers in they, gold
green, red, and blue uni-forms - chuuch!
But I'm feeling like the loneliest monk
So I pull me a Thelonius Monk and blew, the horn
And we don the monikers of goons and gangsters
And are trained to conduct ourselves true, to form
So we add a Shorty, a Money, a Mack
A Lil', a Eazy, or a Young to our name
So all the big ballers grab rims and hung, in the game
And there's a degree, of difficul-ty
to make it from the ghetto boy into the man-hood
Especially when you know that yo' fresh greens
will help eliminated a canned, good
Can, good, and bad co-exisssst?
In a place with plenty of off ramps but no ex-its