[Nas:]

They wanna shine on it

Shine on it (repeated)



Yah

They dug me the soil of mines in the motherland

Now I've placed from one hand to another hand

Illegal smuggling, people struggling, 

Wish they can just throw me back in the mud again

Yeh, this is how we got here

Slave trade and the diamond trade

Every childs afraid, when his mother or father gets sprayed

Forced in the army, young killer brigade

Gets a new name, then he gets his nose glued

His mind can't take what he's going through

Lookin' in the dirt for that ice ol' blue

Then the royal family the ice goes to

This thing has to change, feelin' half ashamed

As i rap with my platinium chain

When you shop for a gift for me

You think about the misery

The same way we made a part our history

We could do the same to the complect ice

But everybody wanna shine right?



Everybody wants heaven, but nobody wants dead

Everybody wants diamonds without the bloodshed

Everybody wants heaven, but nobody wants dead

Everybody wants diamonds without the bloodshed



They wanna shine on em [repeated]



Uh

My bbs glimmers on my chest

Two hundred thousand crested watch on my wrist

I wonder how people starve to death

When God blessed the land that lacks the harvest

Their stones are quality, but their homes are poverty

And the whole world ignores the robbery

I bought my girl pretty rocks and she is mad at me

Tear drop shaped uh, perfect clarity

It shocks so many are killed annually

Cause of greed, lust, and pure vanity

Stop talkin' and do something about it

Every holiday season, jewelery stores crowded

Kids snatched from their homes, mutilated alive

Husbands spreaded from wives

Keep a Jesus peace to be fly

But back in the day, there was a time they called us shine



Everybody wants heaven, but nobody wants dead

Everybody wants diamonds without the bloodshed

Everybody wants heaven, but nobody wants dead

Everybody wants diamonds without the bloodshed



They wanna shine on em [repeated]