Nas - The Message

Fake thug, no love; you get the slug CB4 Gusto
Your luck low, I didn't know til I was drunk though
You freak niggas played out, get fucked and ate out
Prostitute turned bitch, I got the gauge out
Ninety-six ways I made out, Montana way
The Good-F-E-L-L-A Verbal AK spray
Dipped attache, jump out the Range, empty out the ashtray
A glass of 'ze make a man Cassius Clay
Red dot plots, murder schemes, thirty-two shotguns
Regulate with my Dunns
Seventeen rocks gleam from one ring
Yo, let me let y'all niggas know one thing
There's one life, one love, so there can only be one King
The highlights of living, Vegas-style roll dice in linen
Antera spinning on Milleniums twenty G bets I'm winning em
Threats I'm sending em Lex with TV sets the minimum
Ill sex adrenaline, party with villians
A case of Demi-Sec to chase the Henny
Wet any clique, with the semi-tech who want it
Diamonds I flaunt it, chickenheads flock - I lace em
Fried broiled with basil, taste em, crack the legs
Way out of formation it's horizontal how I have em
Fucking me in the Benz wagon
Can it be Vanity from Last Dragon
Grab your gun it's on though
Shit is grimy, real niggas buck in broad daylight
With the broke Mac it won't spray right
Don't give a fuck who they hit as long as the drama's lit
Yo, overnight thugs bug cause they ain't promised shit
Hungry-ass hooligan, stay on that piranha-shit

I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death
I ain't the type of brother made for you to start testing

I peeped you fronting, I was in the Jeep sunk in the seat
Tinted with heat, beats bumping
Across the street you was wilding
Talking bout how you ran the Island in eighty-nine
Laying up, playing the yard with crazy shine
I cocked a baby 9 that nigga grave be mine, clanked him
What was he thinking on my corner when it's pay me time
Dug em you owe me cousin something told me plug him
So dumb, felt my leg burn then it got numb
Spun around and shot one heard shots and dropped son
Caught a hot one, somebody take this biscuit 'fore the cops come
Then they came asking me my name, what the fuck
I got stitched up and went through
Left the hospital that same night, what
Got my gat back, time to backtrack
I had the drop so how the fuck I get clapped
Black was in the Jeep, watching all these scenes speed by
It was a brown Datsun, and yo nobody in my hood got one
That clown nigga's through, blazing at his crew daily
The Bridge touched me up severely, hear me
So when I rhyme it's sincerely yours
Be lighting L's sipping Coors on all floors in project halls
Contemplating war niggas I was cool with before
We used to score together, Uptown copping the raw
But a, a thug changes and love changes
And best friends become strangers, word up

Y'all know my steelo
There ain't an army that could strike back

Thug niggas
Yo, to them thug niggas getting it on in the world you know
To them niggas that's locked down
Doing they thing surviving yaknowmsaying
To my thorough niggas New York and World wide
Yo to the Queensbridge Militia
'96 shit, The Firm clique
Illmatic nigga It Was Written though
It's been a long time coming
Y'all fake niggas, trying to copy
Better come with the real though
Fake ass niggas yo
They throw us slugs we throwing em back, what
Bring the shit man, live man
Fuck that son
Nine-six shit