360 Degrees (Dejazz)

I'm literate when I leave my fingerprint/ Impressing black ink on a document/ My rap sheet/ Camera's flashing/ Under surveillance/ I've just been escorted by the bailiff/ The judges gave a sentence/ Files of pages on desk/ Lawyers carrying suitcases/ Dressed to address/ My mother is a witness along with other youth that digressed/ Some getting off light/ Others going up north forthright/ Before entering the courtroom/ I rejected liars to be ill-advise/ I laid my eyes on/ Snakes in disguise/ Father always came to court looking nice/ Judgement takes ponderation/ In that case I thought twice at the crossroads we see/ A turnaround in lives from a parole officer/ I received advice I don't remember/ Surrounded by other youth offenders/ When it comes up to it/ Only one with us is our mothers/ Lawyers trying to leave us confused/ I refused legal aid/ Frustrated cause he didn't get paid/ He tried to get the case delayed/ But I didn't even show up at my first court date/ So you think I want to stay on another display/ To a road to hell? Already knew what I was going to say/ Selassie I had me on trial/ I know I'm guilty for robbing that Jesus piece/ Sprite and codeine/ It's funny when I got caught even the jolly ranchers I had were stolen/ I earned strikes like bowling/ I remember at the moment/ Security guard tried to shake me up/ Got himself chocked up/ He tried to press charges with no luck/ Second time I spent my day in a cell/ I came to the realization: jail is equivalent to hell/ You can say politically I am liberal/The only way I live my life is being real/ I tell my life story like it was theatrical/ Now microscope back to the reel/ I'm confined to this cell where the devils dwell/ Possessed by the evils oppressing the people/ Why I drank NyQuil? I really can't explain but it would make sense if I used it to ease my pain/ And I robbed the chain for street fame/ Yet some have more profitable ideals/ Than making a living off of crack sales/ A similar struggle for the financial trouble/ Crack seems to make the pennies double so the pots could bubble/ And it's one way you can be constructive amongst the rubble/ Cause what you learn in the worldwide ghetto is to hustle/ In the block apartments/ Drugs get smuggled/ Cointel protocol: to keep the blacks humble in a more vulgar sense/ Jewelry and clothes make up for a lack of confidence/ In the hood there hasn't yet been an armistice/ Honest men trying to help mama with the rent/ Or often you hear tales of people sleeping in parc kent/ The plights of impoverishment/ That's why our attitudes are against pockets full of lint/ My pops had the attitude of forget a “nine to five”/ ''I'ma get rich or die trying" rather than make a dollar and fifty cents'/ That's a slave drive/ Work hard and it's still hard to survive/ That's life/ Within it all, drug dealers, thieves and the innocent/ Lose their life trying to make a sacrifice/ Dying violently it's like we hear no evil cause we live silently/ But this poetry gave us a means to speak/ Now i place my fingers on a different rap sheet/ My life in perspective told on an angle of 360 degrees...yes sir!/