[Chorus: Woman singing]
I see people hating other people
Tell me what's the reason

That your kid is hungry, you ain't got no money
What's the reason?


[Verse 1: Nas]
By the time of age nine I'm already decidin'
If I can protect mommy from the hood by fightin'

Or usin' a knife or a gun when I'm twenty-one
By by then them hoods woulda pushed their way in our apartment
And we die then, so I been a young nervous wreck in the projects

Watchin' them older ^!$$%z pass pot and they high man
I'm just a young boy, snot nose, hair nappy
Cops ride by squeezin' their trigger fingers at me

So I would go to school and try to get good grades
Teacher wrote mommy and kicked me outta school for havin' braids
So she cussed them, said "My son ain't no mother$#&@in' hoodlum"

They judged us, thinking that we dumb 'cause where we come from
Got a little older and now I see
Young ^!$$%z wanted by the powers that be (powers that be)


[Chorus: Woman singing]
I see people hating other people

Tell me what's the reason
That your kid is hungry, you ain't got no money
What's the reason?

For these wars we're fighting with each other
Season after season
When you're workin' hard, but there ain't nothing comin'

What's the reason?

[Verse 2: Nas]

Uh, picture a Black nanny and a baby in a basket pushin' down 5th Ave
She never had it, it's not hers to begin with
She gives it breakfast, baths and dinners

Treats it so tender while her own kids live alone at home with no phone on
Ain't had a good meal in so long, but so long as mommy's a maid
Cookin' and cleanin', she wanna feed her kids and her kids are dreamin'

Where's my daddy, who's my daddy, have you seen him?
I could imagine them askin', what type of human be-ing
Could leave his family, go back to the Carribean?

Was he locked up, shot up, does he have freedom?
Mom said wipe your tears, keep readin'
But daddy's somewhere, spirit broken, feelin' defeated

A man feels he has to conquer all
The world is his oyster, his pearl so y'all know


[Chorus: Woman singing]
I can't find no reason why we can't all live in peace
'Cause this world keeps spinning, yet still I wonder what's the reason


I see people hating other people
Tell me what's the reason

When you're workin' hard but there ain't nothin' comin'
What's the reason?
Oooh-whoa-ooh-whoa


[Verse 3: Nas]
I know a girl, her boyfriend was a fugitive

She's intuitive, be on some stupid %#@!
She called the cops 'cause she hated his mother
Now he away doin' numbers, now she gay with her lover

How many ^!$$%z gon' die this summer?
I pump life in my music, but still life is a wonder
There's a officer in a squad car, he's a prostitute serial killer

It's odd, huh? 'Cause he's the same cop in church with his wife
He's molestin' his son and she ignores it at night
Little bad $$# !@$(, lights a match and kills Betty Shabazz

in her pad while she slept
They said Prescott Bush funded Hitler while the world's in a twister
^!$$%, what you expect? Imagine what's next


[Chorus: Woman singing]
I see people hating other people

Tell me what's the reason
That your kid is hungry, you ain't got no money
What's the reason?
For these wars we're fighting with each other
Season after season

When you're workin' hard, but there ain't nothing comin'
What's the reason?

[Woman harmonizes as Nas talks:]
"Uh, uh, man, man'll search the whole planet, looking for what

Try to conquer all. So what? To all my ^!$$%z with they
kids that love they kids, man. All the daddies out there
To all the ^!$$%z that died tryin'a figure out what's what
Tryin'a be the biggest of the big, you know. Yeah, yeah
Ladies forgive us. Gotta forgive us. For we know not what

we do. Breakin' hearts, leavin' the crib, buggin' out and
%#@!. Just man... man."