Streets Is Watching (Album Version)

Streets Is Watching (Album Version) - Jay-Z

Written by：Labi Siffre/Shawn Carter/David Willis

Look if I shoot you I'm brainless

But if you shoot me then you're famous

What's a ni**a to do

When the streets is watching blocks keep clocking

Waiting for you to break make your first mistake

Can't ignore it that's the fastest way to get extorted

But my time is money and twenty five I can't afford it

Beef assorted like Godiva chocolates

Niggas you bought it I pull the slide back and cock it

Plan aborted you and your mans get a pass

This rhyme you're operating on b**ch time

Y'all niggas ain't worth my shells all y'all niggas

Trying to do is hurt my sales and stop trips to John Meneilly

The type to start a beef then run to the cops

When I see you in the street got one in the drop

When I'd rather be on tour getting a hundred a pop

Taking pictures with some b**ches in front of the drop

The streets is watching

When the streets is watching

Blocks keep clocking

Waiting for you to break make your first mistake

Can't ignore it

Now it's hard not to kill niggas

It's like a full time job not to kill niggas can't chill

The streets is watching

When you froze your arms

Niggas want to test you when your gun goes warm

Can't get caught with your feet up got to keep your heat up

Sweet niggas running 'round swearing sh*t is sweeter

Once you're tagged lame the game is follow the leader

Everybody want a piece of your Scrilla so you gotta keep it realer

Kidnap niggas want to steal you

Broke niggas don't want no cash they just want to kill ya

For the name niggas don't know the rules

Disrespecting the game want you to blow your cool

Force your hand of course that man's plotting

Smarten up the streets is watching it's on

When the streets is watching

Blocks keep clocking

Waiting for you to break make your first mistake

Can't ignore it

My street mentality flip bricks forever

Know me and money we like armed co defendants

Ni**a we stick together

Sh*t whatever for this cheddar ran my game into the ground

Hustle harder until secret indictment time came around

And you can look up and down the streets and I can't be found

Put in twenty four hour shifts but that ain't me now

Got a face too easy to trace niggas mouths got slow leaks

Had to hire a team of workers couldn't play those streets

See out of space like Mercury you jerkin me hectic

Had to call upon my wolves to send niggas the message

I said this 'let's play fair and we can stay here

I'm trying to transform you boys to men like daycare'

Ay there's money to be made and niggas got the picture

Stopped playing with my paper and we got richer

Then hard times fell upon us

Half of my staff had warrants

The other half in the casket lay dormant

I felt like life was cheating me

For the first time in my life I was getting money

But it was like my conscience was eating me

Was this a lesson god teaching me was he saying that

I was playing the game straight from hell from which few came back

Like bad coke pimp or die was my mind frame bad

Was niggas thinking simplify was turning coc*ine crack

Ain't a whole lot of brain to that

Just trying to maintain a stack

And not collide like two trains that's on the same track

But get my life together like the oils I bring back

In the bottom of the pot where the water gets hot

Got my transporter take it across the border then stop

To set up shop with a quarter of rock

Here's the plan

For three straight weeks niggas slaughtered the block

But you know the game is food it f**ked up me and my dudes

One drought can wipe a ni**a out faster than the cops

And this unstable way of living just had to stop

Half of my niggas got time we done real things

By '94 became the subject of half of y'all niggas rhymes

Public apologies to the families of those caught up in my sh*t

But that's the life for us lost souls brought up in this sh*t

The life and times of a demonic mind excited with crime

And the lavish luxuries that just excited my mind

I figured sh*t why risk myself I just write it in rhymes

And let you feel me and if you don't like it then fine

The mind state of a ni**a who boosted the crime rate

So high in one city they send national guards to get me