Nebuchadnezzar

Broken glass on cracked and open asphalt
Depression rolls in waves over the city like a cancer
Pity we can’t scream round here, whisper is too massive
Five-o on the sidelines cheering the game like it’s a mascot
Hundred to zero between the haves and the have nots
You don’t get respect on the ave unless you bag rocks
A rap sheet will get you mixed and mastered with no ass cop
Cause royalties are non-existent if you living on the fast block
Birds are celebrated, corpses melinated
And red and blue on opposite sides of the color gradient
So don’t you cross the lines if you ain’t got your weight up
You hungry but these youngins out here starving for the paper
Greet you with that piece like as-salamu alykum
You bow down and pray to the day you don’t meet your maker
You’re stressing, highly unfavored, seems like survival’s outdated
Expired with no recall but we all dying to save it out in Babylon

Out here in Babylon
We struggling out in Babylon

This is real talk
Portrayers don’t impress much
Live on your Channel 4 will make you lose your breakfast
So you remove your outrage and stay with familiar networks
Cause a man’s life is so much less important than his net worth
Steak and champagne, rosay and lobster
Clean lines of cocaine to numb what you can’t process
Reality is fabricated, purated, and boxed up
And sold on your TV so you can see the boogey monsters
Ignorance is bliss, it’s so cliché but rather fitting
Instead of righteous deaths, they’d rather make a savage living
Eighty-five percent of them is average, basic really
Flossing chains and whips like modern slaves, ironically
Pretty comes in compacts, watch us all with the nightfall
Dirty tapes turn a relative eyesore into an icon
Truth don’t get you paid so lies will play like hands of cards
Too hard to believe? Why don’t you scroll through my Nikon, out here in Babylon

Out here in Babylon
We struggling out in Babylon

The scene’s a battleground: battered faces, tattered gowns
All the world’s a stage so play your part and keep the chatter down
Ghetto birds circling in the skies and pigs are scattered round
And they wonder why you go animal when the camera’s out of bounds
Big Brother’s watching you
Get too flipped, they’ll coffin you
Too much Libya, out of luck, they’ll Muammar al-Gaddafi you
Got you in between a rock and a hard place, a crappy view
And all the usual suspects like nappy hair and a blackened hue
Now the dream’s a nightmare and you too scared to face it, huh
You not trying to go back to the dark past that you made it from
Came from ashy to classic and now you think the sky’s the limit
Grew from litter to Malcolm X, public enemy number one
Suddenly you see the smoke and mirrors out your middle eye
Then you see the mothership up in the bullet-riddled sky
Count your blessings, count your crimes, lose your taste for apple pie
Then new veils come falling down: who’s more freer, you or I?
In Babylon

Out here in Babylon
We struggling out in Babylon