Shine On (Explicit Album Version)

Shine On - Nas

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 shine on shine on shine on

Shine on shine on shine on shine on yeah

They dug me out the soil in the mines of the motherland

Now I'm misplaced one hand to another hand

Illegal smugglin' people strugglin'

Wish they could just throw me back in the mud again

Yeah guess that's how we got here

Slave trade then the diamond trade

Every child's afraid when

His mother and father get sprayed

Forced in the army young killer brigade

Gets a new name then he give his nose glue

Til' his mind can't take what he's gon' through

Lookin' in that dirt for that eyes so blue

Then the Royal Family the ice goes to

And this thing has to change feelin' half-ashamed

As I rap with my platinum chain when you

Shop for a gift for me

You think about the misery the same way

We made apartheid history

We can do the same thing to the conflict 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 shine on shine on shine on

Shine on shine on shine on shine on

My VVS glimmers on my chest

200 thou' encrusted watch on my wrist

I wonder how people starve to death

When God bless the land that lacks the harvest

The stone's equality but they homes are poverty

And the whole world ignores the robbery

Bought my girl pretty rocks when she's 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 somethin' about it

Every holiday season jewelry stores crowded

Kids snatched from their homes mutilated alive

Husbands separated from wives

Keep the Jesus piece to be fly

But back in the day there was

A time when 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 shine on shine on shine on

Shine on shine on shine on shine on