Pray

[Verse 1: [?]]
What happens?
Something new emerges
Whether it be rock and roll or whether it be hip-hop
It comes from the bottom
And what happens
The world gets ahold of it
America gets ahold of it
(And ruins it)
They fall in love with it, they don't even know they're ruining it
They got like, it's like
Gotta be some story out there where everything somebody touches just like, just dies
And that's the system
Everytime the system touches it
Every time the system gets ahold of it, it's over
It gets commercialized, it gets pimped out
We really think that this music represents what we are
You know what I mean
And it's like if you really take another listen
To what is being played right now, what's being said
It don't represent us anymore
You know what I mean
I don't know if it ever did
Or if it just really represented what could be sold
And what could be marketed, what could be pushed
Does it represent the mentality of a small amount of people in this community
Yeah, sure, an exaggerated version
You know what I mean
But it don't represent everybody
But it's all you hear

[Verse 2: [?]]
Top five rappers dead or alive?
It's hard to say that
If I give you top five we'll still be in the eighties before I get to the nineties
Spitting bars that actually have substance and meaning
You know a lot of times
Lot of these people be rapping
They just say words that rhyme
I'm talking about people that actually call themselves emcees
[?]
I've never been a fan of just gibberish
You know what I'm saying, like
Just 'cause you can make words rhyme and make a sentence
Man look that don't mean shit
My daughter can make words rhyme and make a sentence
Man look that don't mean shit
My daughter can make words rhyme

[Verse 3: Nas]
At this point of it
I've seen so many of the purists who really love it
Turn to struggling artists because they're not benefitting
Whereas dudes that ain't got no talent is benefitting
You know what I'm saying so
It's just definitely a period where it's been dead
I'm just bold enough to say it