Cali Story
Verse 1
I was raised on the block
learned everything from a street by the name of Sinbad
where it's harder to get your hands on a book,
then your hands on a 10 sack
and cats let their pants sag
and die over red and blue rags
and bullets fly past ready to crash dreams
of innocent new borns and pre-teens
the homeless fiend tokes a newport
the smoke he exhales foretells
the future of an ex-con fresh from jail
it's cloudy
youngsters locked in county
they spend more on prison than schools to imprison me in my surroundings. Where you from?
Cali-for-nia
where folks try to go Hollywood end up dead in the back of a dark alley another dream deferred
running in black jeans and nike cortez from a ghetto bird
it's where I heard a pops tell his son
when you see them cops you run
arm yourself with handguns, semis and shotguns
to save your life
because they got 3 strikes and prop 21
we live fast and die young
10 years old with a cell phone mistaken for a gun
that's where I come from
Verse 2
I'm from the state where folks is playing lottery
they're praying for champagne dreams
and folks that I know get done up like Rodney King
where the CIA turned Oakland youth from panthers into crack fiends
now young souls paint ebonic ghetto tapestries on the sides of city buildings I'm from the state with Sharks, Giants, A's and 49ers
and children of Republicans and Democrats at Stanford and Berkeley
minor in political science because they know white collar crime pays
they get off like Enron
making loot off of stocks and bonds
and if you rally the people too long
I'm from where you disappear like dot coms
Black Panthers, Brown Berets are ghetto icons
kids become convicts at 13
I'm from the homes of 3 strikes
25 to life for stealing a slice of pizza
where the cops are killers
I'm from the state where the cops killed Tyisha Miller
we call it Cali-for-nia