They Say - Jay Rock, Kendrick Lamar

Growin up I was a knucklehead

Boy you never listen to me!

Thats what my momma said

Im from the projects

I ain’t never had shit

Me and my older brother

We had to share a mattress

No heat, no lights

Had to keep them candles lit

My daddy left me at 8

In an out my life and shit

Gang bangas dope dealers replaced my father

Neighborhood hustlas taught me to get them dollars

Thats when I became a problem

Product of my environment

It’s hard to grow up be a doctor or a fireman

When you constantly seein that g ride tires screeching

And them shots firin all the time it happens frequently

The hood inspired him, to be a G

I bled for the game did it all for the letter B

The big homie gave me the name jay rock

This ain’t no rap gimmick

It’s a real life story on watts livin nigga

You can take, me out the hood, but you can’t take the hood out me

And that’s the way it will forever be

And I can’t help it i’m gutter

Why should I change now

When all my life I been gang banged out

That project shit run deep in my veins now

And I can’t help it

Ooh my lord knows that I can’t help it

Let me take you on a detour

East side watts

Niggas will go in projects

Follow me home to my black and white apartments

Police roll thru with caution, scared to death

The homies got tats across them

Capitol BH over they necks

Since birth banging the set

Even the hoes banging the set

Some ain’t, but most is hood rats

That looking for that buck

Them trash cans lay in the street

Ghetto technique for drive bys

For the low them 5 dollas will get you high

Dice games, YGs, fist fights

Six fo’s, el co’s, g rides, and mini bikes

Might see a couple of zombies late night

Off what?

off pipe membrane dead right

No lie something in the bushes

Either the AK or the .45, no lie

Raised in the ghetto

With rats and roaches

Smokers on porches

Getting high off yola

It’s colder north

But my city’s the coldest

Where we ain’t promised to see the morning, nigga

You could take me out the hood

But the hood will never leave me

I’m still bangin

I’m still hangin

The only difference is

I’m not slangin

Nickels and dimes

More like slanging these rap lines

Verses of truth

When I step in the booth

Niggas know I pour my soul out for the struggling youth

For that fatherless son who needed love so he ran with a crew

Grew up before his older brother did

Gin and juice

Replaced the pain I knew

Carrying them thangs to school

Them niggas was tripping I wasn’t bangin the blue

But they had to respect me

I never ran from who?

Nobody, put my faith in god

It’s amazin how I overcame them odds

On my momma this past year my life has slightly been revised

But notice I said slightly

Cuz me being absent from where I came from

That’s unlikely