Back then, I resolved back then to get over on the world. I made up my mind I was gonna be a hustler. I was hanging in the pool hall, making small bets to cover lunch money and train fare back to the suburbs. School had me on probation, my family rented rooms out by the week and went to the food kitchen for donations. Slowly, it became apparent that the world was getting over on me.

This one time I had to go to jail
And they called me that organelle, that one that’s the powerhouse of the cell (mitochondrion)
They say do one thing and do it well
But these silly-ditty riddle rhymers flew too close to the sun and then they fell, oh, how they fell and fell and they fell
Put ‘em up for the percolating prodigies, the untrained unsung musical herculeses,
The horny little corner kids teasing their main squeezes, the player everybody called the Black Jesus
Tell me you believe in this, tell me you can grieve with us when we receive the steamy fever that is indeed with us
Tell me it’s ingenious, tell me why it cleaves to us, why it always and ever did mean this much to us

I rip through ‘em like Westbrook
I fuck around and knock ‘em out like a left hook
I snooker the bookmakers, leaving the motherfuckers shook, like breakin’ they hearts when I’m cookin’’em up and I’m servin’ ‘em , baby, the shit’ is just textbook
Cutting hard to the dime might get you the best look, instead of standing there having to take what the rest took

I remember drinking Budweiser underneath the Broadway Bridge, flowing with the Harlem River by, sir
Spitting like the devil but the Spuyten Duyvil was a whirlpool, fool, it was not a geyser

I don’t got no need for the spin. When I switched to gin I was half a pint in the pocket and three sheets to the wind

And when I lost a race to three for five I was all in. That meant losing a fin. That’d make me mad as sin.
Not Unger, and sometimes it make you wonder where the hell a little broke sixteen got a five his ass could put on the line
Inside he was dying, thinking he was more shinier than a dime, more fly than chilled fine wine
I guess you could call that a hell of a time, when the wisdom of a young man’s life starts to ring like a bell or a chime
And every part of the atmosphere, and everything I got through that year ground me up in its gears, I was shot through with fear
I poured out that beer
But why I did, well, it still isn’t clear
A sucker think he good
A sucker think he good
Everybody would if he could but he can’t and he’ll never find his damn way out of the neighborhood

Business bad? "Fuck you, pay me."
Oh, you had a fire? "Fuck you, pay me."
Place got hit by lightning, huh? "Fuck you, pay me

Had a slippery pool cue? Fuck you. Pay me.
Got a paper in school due? Fuck you. Pay me.
Oh your girl and your best friend fooled you? Fuck you, pay me.