(Always writing… always revising)      Shorty feels the pressure on his shoulders as he’s liftin it   Wonders why the elders always tell him not to question it   Options at the bottom of the ladder got him desperate   But all he ever wanted was a weapon to protect him with   Riding a 36 through the veins of the beacon   The water is the heart, its rainin when its beatin   In the city that I sleep in I’m dreamin while I’m awake   The miserable escape but theyre too high to ponder faith   But who am I, to use their plight to illustrate a rhyme   With everything around me that I’ve never had to live   But I observe the inner qualities to serve the people properly   Tell them that their freedom isn’t found in private property   Prostitutes are more than just the folks who sell their bodies   See this shit applies to those whos souls are a commodity   I can hear the colony callin me back to be   The bullet in the belly while they lock, load, and squeeze      Rebel with a pen lettin off buckshots in threes   Rewriting what it is into what it ought to be   They made a mockery out of the possibility   But under constant revision is the poem that I be      Rebel with a pen lettin off buckshots in threes   Rewriting what it is into what it ought to be   I be the emcee in the place not to be   But under constant revision is the poem that I be      Shorty feels oppression on his shoulders as he’s liftin it   Wonders why the elders always tell him not to question it   Conjuring the courage just to conquer whats been killin him   He says its fucked up cause he knows no other synonym   Hidden from the truth, seen youths turned to troops   Whos goal at 21 is to turn 22, true tuition’s too high   and those with the privelage to pay don’t listen, it’s a shame, go figurin   The name of the father, the son and holy lyrics   I suppose those who know what I’m sayin when they hear it   Might rage against the system, or hate me for dissin   The house in which they live in as a slave to the rhythm   But I walk the broken sidewalk paved with the magic   Of those who walk past it, just to survive traffic   If paybacks a bitch, then gravity’s a bastard   Avenues I used to call familiar turned backward   Rebel with a pen lettin off buckshots in threes   Rewriting what it is into what it ought to be   They made a mockery out of the possibility   But under constant revision is the poem that I be      Rebel with a pen lettin off buckshots in threes   Rewriting what it is into what it ought to be   I be the emcee in the place not to be   But under constant revision is the poem that I be      Yo.. shorty’s getting grown old enough to read the messages   Understands the elders as he then begins to question them   One generation handed down what they’ve inherited   Another generation rewriting the master narrative   Older folks overdose on broken hopes often   Children then begin to grow comatose and lost up   In the clutches of the wickedest fingers   Indicative of the systems inhibited   Ability to listen to the voice of the dyin who’ve been tired of cryin   Nightsticks fall where projectiles are flyin   Through a straight path narrow like the gap between heaven and hell   They skip class cause they goin to jail, true   Students prevail when the knowledge is passed   But others seem to fail sittin flat on their ass   And now I be the emcee in the place not be   Under constant revision in the poem that I be      Rebel with a pen lettin off buckshots in threes   Rewriting what it is into what it ought to be   I be the emcee in the place not to be   But under constant revision is the poem that I be