We ain't meant to survive, cause it's a setup, And even though you're fed up, Huh, ya got to keep your head up.

If you walked by a street and you was walking a concrete and you saw a rose growing from concrete, even if it had messed up petals and it was a little to the side you would marvel at just seeing a rose grow through concrete. So way is it that when you see some ghetto kid grow out of the dirtiest circumstance and he can talk and he can sit across the room and make you cry, make you laugh, all you can talk about is my dirty rose, my dirty stems and how am leaning crooked to the side, u can't even see that I've come up from out of that.

Let me say for the record, I am not a gangster and never have been. I'm not the thief who grabs your purse. I'm not the guy who jacks your car. I'm not down with people who steal and hurt others. I'm just a brother who fights back. I'm not some violent closet psycho. I've got a job. I'm an artist.

Picture me inside the misery of poverty, no man alive has ever witnessed struggles ive survived, praying hard for better days promised to hold on me and my dogs aint have a choice but to hold on.

Losing my homies in a hurry, they're relocating to the cemetery.

There's a machine that I have nothing to do with. It's called the "Tupac Machine."

I didn't get that power from gunz..coz there's no gunz in jail..I got that power from books and from thinking and strategizing...... That's what I want little niggaz to see.