(Intro: Talib Kweli)   Ghetto to ghetto, backyard to yard   We tear it up y'all, bless the mic with the gods (come on)   Precious metals round our necks and arms (yea)   We tear it up y'all, bless the mic with the gods   Ghetto to ghetto, backyard to yard   We tear it up y'all, bless the mic with the gods (come on)   Precious metals round our necks and arms (yea)   We tear it up y'all, bless the mic with the gods      (Hook: Anthony Hamilton)   Whatever in your heart is where you want to be   My hood is the ghetto   Even when you look   Its never what you see   My hood is the ghetto   I've been down before up is just a reach   Cause my hood is the ghetto   Catch a second wind   Then begin again   My hood is the ghetto      (Verse 1: Common)   Black magic in the hood, its tragic but understood   Crack addicts, crack windows, crack wood   Even whats bad becomes good, status becomes stood   Upon the pedestal welcome to the ghetto show   Federal buildings, pissy hallways filled with children pushing children   Fiends lips peeling, shit seems real and   What's real is the estate of mind that we're in   The situation feels great   My man peels weight, so he can fill plates   You might get love but you still feel hate   Through and chain plates, we communicate   Chicago to brooklyn nigga real ones do relate      (Verse 2: Talib Kweli)   If lyrics sold then truth be told   I'll probably be just as rich and famous as jay-z   Truthfully I wanna rhyme like common sense   Next best thing I do a record with common sense   Cause its the music, its blues, its jazz, its acoustics   Soul, rock and roll the hip hop we be producing yea   It's the gear, it's the flare, it's the stare   Nowadays they'll shot you where they used to shoot the fair   Remember the lost soldiers, pour a beer, shoot the air   We got our own elected officials, no matter who the mayor   I know you know what I'm talking about   From New York to the South, take off your shoes when you walk in the house      (Hook)      (Verse 3: Talib Kweli)   Yo   I grew up where they're playing skele in the parking lot   And sell paintings of Aaliyah, BIG and Pac up in the barbershop   Buildings too big so you don't really see the stars a lot   But rapping, drinking, and going to prison you see them bars a lot   I feel the spirit in the dark and hear it in my heart   And always keep my ears to the block till I dearly depart   Hip hop is really the art   We have to express the part of ourselves that make us want to martyr ourselves   It ain't harder to tell when somebody stick you up and put the hammer to you   They want them dead presidents like Stickman and Mutulu   With a gun to your jaw, these kids don't run anymore   Kicks is a hundred or more      (Verse 4: Common)   A man in front of the store, begging for money and mercy   I told him say a prayer under his breath, he cursed me   Niggaz is thirsty, I heard it's a drought   Up early, serving from their grandmother's house   Sometime the ghetto feels desolate, yo the eyes of the hood yo is desperate   Effected by the deficit, times and lessons get hard   Either get by or get god, but but you try to get by   It's like the block keep blocking   You try to make moves, its like the car just keep stopping   We shorties in the court, need cochran yea   I tell them why the weed seeds popping, in the game you need options   No time for feet watching, me and kwe keep rocking for the ghetto      Hook times 2