In the city where life is animated with colors
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Contaminated with aggravated brothers, who knows where the love is?
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Growing up swinging, through my upbringing
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My limits is the sky from the all eye seeing
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Of so-called realities filled with technicalities
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I watch my steps, stay on my p's and check my casualties
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Not to get played, equipped with all the tricks of the trade
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I even learned from the mistakes that the next man made
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I know to choose and pick the people I grow up around
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I know to grow and get to know the town up and down
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But there's no instructions, so many directions
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A lot of crooks look to get hooked with connections
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Some thought they knew all adolescence could teach
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They graduated from school but fail life in the streets
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Your pops taught you to strive and stay a live, no ditty
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It's easy to die when you're living for the city
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That's how I'm living (x3)
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Yeah that's how I'm living
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That's how I'm living (x3)
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Yep that's how I'm living
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I grow according to my environmental habitat
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I hang where everything seem to happen at
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I seen it all, and I've been doing that since I was small
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Catch a flashback y'all, if I can recall
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The days on the corner we watched the world go by
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Or nights that wasn't right like when a good friend dies
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I quest for the best for prepare for the worst
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Never scared but I cared if I'm blessed or I'm cursed
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Yes I fear no man but Allah
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I'm Gomar Oras Dubar
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Which is God so It's hard to see Ra
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I do what I gotta do, with or without a clue
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Run through any obstacle including you
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Cause I ain't got to bust you, cause I got the muscle
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A push any clown that tries to slow down my hustle
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I gotta get by, but there's no time for pity
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It's easy to die when you're living for the city
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That's how I'm living (x3)
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Yeah that's how I'm living
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That's how I'm living (x3)
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Yep that's how I'm living
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That's how I'm living (x3)
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Yep that's how I'm living
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That's how I'm living (x3)
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Yeah that's how I'm living
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I'm in a zone everywhere I seem to roam is home
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A rolling stone, I hold my own just like a microphone
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I stay in tune, travel in harmony and set the tone
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Being young but I'm grown and well-known
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Try to take me out New York but you can't take New York out of me
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Cause that's the only way that I know how to be
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My neighbors is jealous they label us drug sellers
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We may be hood dwellers, we're just a bunch of goodfellas
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Cause we run wild with a passion, my style and my fashion
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Is getting, kid, I'm making cash and crashing
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Parties that everybody's talking about, we turn it out
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I'm just a native New Yorker with clout
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I know my way around any borough and any town
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I make a lot of ground and I'm hard to be found
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I get down to the nitty gritty, wake up with something pretty
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It gets me through another day living for the city
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That's how I'm living (x3)
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Yeah that's how I'm living
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That's how I'm living (x3)
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Yep that's how I'm living
|
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That's how I'm living (x3)
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Yep that's how I'm living
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That's how I'm living (x3)
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Yeah that's how I'm living
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Living for the City
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| Rakim |
