(Brother Ali]

I guess its no different from any place else in the world man, I look out my window i see the whole thing.

One side of the street, is Malone's Funeral Home and the

Other side's a library, try very hard to picture this shit

Walk through where I live at

Where parents are embarassed to tell you they raise they kids at

you need some half and half of an 8-ball, you can get that

Fuck with Little Rodney and you'll get all of your ribs cracked

In a location where slanging crack rock is not seen as a fuckin' recreation but a vocation

And the sellers, and the smokers are both patient

Got one eye on Minneapolis P.D. 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 shit, just so they could caught

And get touched, this growing up shit's rough

That's a big part of why were so mixed up

Shit 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 pussy 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

(outside my window, outside my room. Outside my window, outside my room,i can just feel the soul.)