No matter how good a woman is, she still can't really teach him to be no man or daddy Used to walk around with a head full of naps Chubby young kid with a head full of raps Doing what he can, just trying to adapt Jumped to the block off of grandma's lap Jumped to the block, so did every emcee But gotta tell the truth, yeah, the block wasn't me Lookin' for adventure, but the block was not The block was real, Woo got k**ed Half a year later, Big Spank got k**ed And I got robbed, and Ronnie got shot And I bought my first tape by 2Pac And I got hard, cause I was smart I knew that the weak and the meek couldn't make it in the street Had to a**ert yourself to survive So I convinced myself it was better for me To be Jack in the *Lord of the Flies* It's a book I read, books I read Cause I'm addicted to literature As a young boy rollin' 'round with the clique Cause of that I was insecure I was insecure cause I realized Ain't no room for the civilized When the wild men rumble in the jungle And that's why Simon and Piggy died Ralph survives, but he lives changed Nothin's the same, sh**'ll drive a man out his brain Drive a young man insane My cousin Jimmy had a breakdown he ain't never been the same And he never will be again If I could fix his brain Take back the crack in his mind Give it all back, you can have the racks and fame I'd give it all back in exchange This is for the dads and the grandads And the little homies that ain't never had dads This is for the uncles and the OGs And the lil homies, and the YGs This is for the men I look up to And all the struggles that the men had to go through For every man that's ever had to man up If that's you, let me see you put your hands up I lost my youth, chasin' my youth Made me a youth in the back of a coupe Teenage love, like Slick Rick said I hit her with my Dougie and I had a gold tooth Fur Kangol, Filas too She was light-skinned red gold tooth But of course it didn't last cause I had to go to college And she was still in high school Damn, I'm a dad, this is bad This ain't good, my baby's in the hood And I'm walkin' 'round the black ivy league campus Like I wish you house n***as would So I go get a job, UPS Where they treat you like BS and You all know how the story goes Drop out of college and sell 'ses I figured I'd invest in studio time Drop rhymes, have success But, mostly I got fronted on, stunted on n***a dealt with some stress I'll take that two, take that three Cause my momma got to see me on TV And my grandmomma got to get her Grammy And my grandaddy got to see his boy eat See his boy grow, I wish I never had that show I wish you never had to go Wish you could meet my wife, wish you could see my life But you had to see the light Wish I had you one more day Wish I had tomorrow that's your birthday We can sip gin, straight get fade We can ride old schools through the trey