[Brother Ali]
One side of the street, is Malone's Funeral Home and the
Other side's a library, try very hard to picture this %#@!

Walk through where I live at
Where parents are embarassed to tell you they raise they kids at
You'll need some half and half over 8 bar you can get that

$#&@ with Little Rodney and you'll get all of your ribs cracked
In a location where slanging crack rock is not seen as a $#&@in' recreation but a vocation
And the cellars, and the smoke is a ????

Got one eye on Minneapolis P.T. they both racin'
3 for 50 is the supply and demand, and the
Twin Cities' American heartland, and they

Been busy, masterminds tearing apart plans
And hoop dreamers ballin' with blisters on they hands
With chains danglin' from the rims

Pain strangles 'em from within
Till' the belt around the arm makes the veins stand at attention


I try to block it out with a bed sheet the moonlight's as a curtain
'Cause I'm not comforted by red and blue lights when I'm hurtin'
Mommy loves you yeah I knew but I wasn't certain

'Cause the lenses through which she views life wasn't workin'
As a boy she told me wait till' your father to come home
I'm 24 still waitin' for my father to come home

And some parents only touch they children when a whips brought
That's why bad kids do bad %#@!, just so they could caught
And get touched, this growing up %#@!'s rough

That's a big part of why were so mixed up
%#@! we don't have Bar Mitzvah's
We become men the first time our father hits us

And we don't open gifts up
Sister Regina from across the street is beautiful
But for 50 bucks ain't nothing she won't do to you

Used to be premium #~!!@ now she used up
For that same 50 bucks she got to do some new stuff
Whatever it takes for you to take the dollars out

If you don't intervene then there's a day she'll turn her daughter out
Speaking of kids I'm fixing lunch for my first born
I had the windows wide open 'cause the weather's warm

That's when the greatest hits of Donnie Hathaway
Got interrupted by a drive-by shooting half a block away
Vaheem was in the window, he didn't get hit though

All please due to Allah

[Chorus]

I see all this from the desk that I write my rhymes from
Pen starts to scribble on it's own my minds numb
But you can call me modern urban Norman Rockwell

I paint a picture of the spot well

I see all this from the desk that I write my rhymes from

Pen starts to scribble on it's own my minds numb
But you can call me modern urban Norman Rockwell
I paint a picture of the spot well


I see all this from the desk that I write my rhymes from
Pen starts to scribble on it's own my minds numb

But you can call me modern urban Norman Rockwell
I paint a picture of the spot...well