[Mos Def]
Booka-booka-booka-booka-booka-booka
Ha hah
You know the deal
It's just me yo
Beats by Su-Primo for all of my peoples
Negroes and latinos and even the gringos
Yo, check it one for Charlie Hustle
Two for Steady Rock
Three for the fourth coming live, future shock
It's five dimensions
Six senses
Seven firmaments of heaven to hell
8 Million Stories to tell
Nine planets faithfully keep in orbit
With the probable tenth
The universe expands length
The body of my text poses extra strength
Power-lifting powerless up
Out of this towering inferno
My ink so hot it burn through the journal
I'm blacker than midnight on Broadway and Myrtle
Hip-Hop past all your tall social hurdles
Like the nationwide projects
Prison-industry complex
Broken gla** wall better keep your alarm set
Streets too loud to ever hear freedom ring
Say evacuate your sleep
It's dangerous to dream
But you chain cats get they CHA-POW
Who dead now
k**ing fields need blood to graze the cash cow
It's a number game
But sh** don't add up somehow
Like I got, sixteen to thirty-two bars to rock it
But only 15% of profits, ever see my pockets like
Sixty-nine billion in the last twenty years
Spent on national defense
But folks still live in fear like
Nearly half of America's largest cities
Is one-quarter black
That's why they gave Ricky Ross all the crack
Sixteen ounces to a pound, twenty more to a key
A five minute sentence hearing and you no longer free
40% of Americans own a cell phone
So they can hear
Everything that you say when you ain't home
I guess, Michael Jackson was right, "You Are Not Alone"
Rock your hardhat black cause you in the Terrordome
Full of hard n***as, large n***as, dice tumblers
Young teens and prison greens facing life numbers
Crack mothers, crack babies and AIDS patients
Young bloods can't spell
But they could rock you in PlayStation
This new math is whipping motherf**ers a**
You wanna know how to rhyme
You better learn how to add
It's mathematics
[Chorus] [?]
[Mos Def]
Yo, it's one universal law
But two sides to every story
Three strikes and you be in for life
Mandatory
Four MC's murdered in the last four years
I ain't trying to be the fifth one
The millennium is here
Yo it's 6 Million Ways to Die
From the seven deadly thrills
Eight-year olds getting
Found with 9 mill's
It's 10 P.M., where your seeds at?
What's the deal
He on the hill puffin krill
To keep they belly filled
Light in the a** with heavy steel
Sights on the pretty sh** in life
Young soldiers trying to earn they next stripe
When the average minimum wage is $5.15
You best believe you gotta find a new ground to get cream
The white unemployment rate, is nearly more than triple for black
So front-liners got they gun in your back
Bubbling crack
Jewel theft and robbery to combat poverty
And end up in the global jail economy
Stiffer stipulations attached to each sentence
Budget cutbacks but increased police presence
And even if you get out of prison still living
Join the other five million under state supervision
This is business, no faces just lines and statistics
From your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits
The system break man child and women into figures
Two columns for who is, and who ain't n***as
Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings
But you push too hard, even numbers got limits
Why did one straw break the camel's back? Here's the secret:
The million other straws underneath it
It's all mathematics
[Chorus]