Mathematics (Freddie Joachim Remix)

[Mos Def]

Booka-booka-booka-booka-booka-booka

Ha hah

You know the deal

It's just me yo

Beats by Su-Primo for all of my peoples

Negroes and latinos and even the gringos

Yo, check it one for Charlie Hustle

Two for Steady Rock

Three for the fourth coming live, future shock

It's five dimensions

Six senses

Seven firmaments of heaven to hell

8 Million Stories to tell

Nine planets faithfully keep in orbit

With the probable tenth

The universe expands length

The body of my text poses extra strength

Power-lifting powerless up

Out of this towering inferno

My ink so hot it burn through the journal

I'm blacker than midnight on Broadway and Myrtle

Hip-Hop past all your tall social hurdles

Like the nationwide projects

Prison-industry complex

Broken glass wall better keep your alarm set

Streets too loud to ever hear freedom ring

Say evacuate your sleep

It's dangerous to dream

But you chain cats get they CHA-POW

Who dead now

Killing fields need blood to graze the cash cow

It's a number game

But shit don't add up somehow

Like I got, sixteen to thirty-two bars to rock it

But only 15% of profits, ever see my pockets like

Sixty-nine billion in the last twenty years

Spent on national defense

But folks still live in fear like

Nearly half of America's largest cities

Is one-quarter black

That's why they gave Ricky Ross all the crack

Sixteen ounces to a pound, twenty more to a key

A five minute sentence hearing and you no longer free

40% of Americans own a cell phone

So they can hear

Everything that you say when you ain't home

I guess, Michael Jackson was right, "You Are Not Alone"

Rock your hardhat black cause you in the Terrordome

Full of hard niggas, large niggas, dice tumblers

Young teens and prison greens facing life numbers

Crack mothers, crack babies and AIDS patients

Young bloods can't spell

But they could rock you in PlayStation

This new math is whipping motherfuckers ass

You wanna know how to rhyme

You better learn how to add

It's mathematics

[Chorus] [?]

[Mos Def]

Yo, it's one universal law

But two sides to every story

Three strikes and you be in for life

Mandatory

Four MC's murdered in the last four years

I ain't trying to be the fifth one

The millennium is here

Yo it's 6 Million Ways to Die

From the seven deadly thrills

Eight-year olds getting

Found with 9 mill's

It's 10 P.M., where your seeds at?

What's the deal

He on the hill puffin krill

To keep they belly filled

Light in the ass with heavy steel

Sights on the pretty shit in life

Young soldiers trying to earn they next stripe

When the average minimum wage is $5.15

You best believe you gotta find a new ground to get cream

The white unemployment rate, is nearly more than triple for black

So front-liners got they gun in your back

Bubbling crack

Jewel theft and robbery to combat poverty

And end up in the global jail economy

Stiffer stipulations attached to each sentence

Budget cutbacks but increased police presence

And even if you get out of prison still living

Join the other five million under state supervision

This is business, no faces just lines and statistics

From your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits

The system break man child and women into figures

Two columns for who is, and who ain't niggas

Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings

But you push too hard, even numbers got limits

Why did one straw break the camel's back? Here's the secret:

The million other straws underneath it

It's all mathematics

[Chorus]