[Mos Def]   Booka-booka-booka-booka-booka-booka   Ha hah   You know the deal   It's just me yo   Beats by Su-Primo for all of my peoples, negroes and latinos   and even the gringos      Yo, check it one for Charlie Hustle, two for Steady Rock   Three for the fourth comin live, future shock   It's five dimensions, six senses   Seven firmaments of heaven to hell, 8 Million Stories to tell   Nine planets faithfully keep in orbit   with the probable tenth, the universe expands length   The body of my text posess extra strength   Power-liftin powerless up, out of this, towerin inferno   My ink so hot it burn through the journal   I'm blacker than midnight on Broadway and Myrtle   Hip-Hop past all your tall social hurdles   like the nationwide projects, prison-industry complex   Broken glass wall better keep your alarm set   Streets too loud to ever hear freedom sing   Say evacuate your sleep, it's dangerous to dream   but you chain cats get they CHA-POW, who dead now   Killin fields need blood to graze the cash cow   It's a number game, but shit don't add up somehow   Like I got, sixteen to thirty-two bars to rock it   but only 15% of profits, ever see my pockets like   sixty-nine billion in the last twenty years   spent on national defense but folks still live in fear like   nearly half of America's largest cities is one-quarter black   That's why they gave Ricky Ross all the crack   Sixteen ounces to a pound, twenty more to a ki   A five minute sentence hearing and you no longer free   40% of Americans own a cell phone   so they can hear, everything that you say when you ain't home   I guess, Michael Jackson was right, "You Are Not Alone"   Rock your hardhat black cause you in the Terrordome   full of hard niggaz, large niggaz, dice tumblers   Young teens and prison greens facin life numbers   Crack mothers, crack babies and AIDS patients   Young bloods can't spell but they could rock you in PlayStation   This new math is whippin motherfuckers ass   You wanna know how to rhyme you better learn how to add   It's mathematics      Chorus: scratched by DJ Premier (repeat 2X)      "The Mighty Mos Def.."   "It's simple mathematics" -> Fat Joe   "Check it out!"   "I revolve around science.."   "What are we talking about here?"      .. "Do your math" -> Erykah Badu (2X) ..   .. "One.. t-t-two.. three, four" -> James Brown ..   .. "What are we talking about here?" ..      [Mos Def]   Yo, it's one universal law but two sides to every story   Three strikes and you be in for life, mandatory   Four MC's murdered in the last four years   I ain't tryin to be the fifth one, the millenium is here   Yo it's 6 Million Ways to Die, from the seven deadly thrills   Eight-year olds gettin found with 9 mill's   It's 10 P.M., where your seeds at? What's the deal   He on the hill puffin krill to keep they belly filled   Light in the ass with heavy steel, sights on the pretty shit in life   Young soldiers tryin to earn they next stripe   When the average minimum wage is $5.15   You best believe you gotta find a new ground to get cream   The white unemployment rate, is nearly more than triple for black   so frontliners got they gun in your back   Bubblin crack, jewel theft and robbery to combat poverty   and end up in the global jail economy   Stiffer stipulations attached to each sentence   Budget cutbacks but increased police presence   And even if you get out of prison still livin   join the other five million under state supervision   This is business, no faces just lines and statistics   from your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits   The system break man child and women into figures   Two columns for who is, and who ain't niggaz   Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings   but you push too hard, even numbers got limits   Why did one straw break the camel's back? Here's the secret:   the million other straws underneath it - it's all mathematics      Chorus      {closing scratch} "Mathematics.."