John Legend, The Roots - Little Ghetto Boy (Prelude) (Feat. Malik Yusef)

You know you ghetto boy
when you got a face with a scar
And yo' highest aspirations
is a place and a car
Shorties pull out and bussssst
like a money shot
Now he on the run he hot
And he hurtin his Granny
and she the only one he got
The hood so shady
You give up hope
of ever even tryin to find
a sunny spot light
they caught him at the stop light
but if he woulda run that yellow
Then he coulda run the globe
But insteed with speed
They put one in the middle of
his frontal lobe
like a unicorn
I'm just tryin to keep you
informed
To my little ghetto soldiers
in they
gold green red and blue
uniforms chuuch
But I'm feeling like the
loneliest monk
So I pull me a Thelonius Monk
and blew the horn
And we don the monikers
of goons and gangsters
And are trained to conduct
ourselves true to form
So we add a Shorty
a Money a Mack
A Lil' a Eazy
or a Young to our name
So all the big ballers grab rims
and hung in the game
And there's a degree of difficulty
to make it from the ghetto boy
into the man hood
Especially when you know that
yo' fresh greens
will help eliminated a canned
good
Can good and bad coexisssst
In a place with plenty of off
ramps but no exits
You know you ghetto boy
when you got a face with a scar
And yo' highest aspirations
is a place and a car
Shorties pull out and bussssst
like a money shot
Now he on the run he hot
And he hurtin his Granny
and she the only one he got
The hood so shady
You give up hope
of ever even tryin to find
a sunny spot light
they caught him at the stop light
but if he woulda run that yellow
Then he coulda run the globe
But insteed with speed
They put one in the middle of
his frontal lobe
like a unicorn
I'm just tryin to keep you
informed
To my little ghetto soldiers
in they
gold green red and blue
uniforms chuuch
But I'm feeling like the
loneliest monk
So I pull me a Thelonius Monk
and blew the horn
And we don the monikers
of goons and gangsters
And are trained to conduct
ourselves true to form
So we add a Shorty
a Money a Mack
A Lil' a Eazy
or a Young to our name
So all the big ballers grab rims
and hung in the game
And there's a degree of difficulty
to make it from the ghetto boy
into the man hood
Especially when you know that
yo' fresh greens
will help eliminated a canned
good
Can good and bad coexisssst
In a place with plenty of off
ramps but no exits

John Legend, The Roots