Story Of The Streets

Dear Pac, I'm 11 and I found your tape in a shoebox

My brother left behind, walls in my house got holes in them

And I got a lot of holes inside my heart and took a lot of bullets to my head

Now I'm by my own, homie, I wanna be as resilient as you

I wanna live like you, man, I feel like you

You the only homie I'd ever look up to, you understand me

Moms work doubles, I make noodles

I don't got nobody to tell the shit to

You said keep your head up, so I did it

Tryna block, I'm tryin'

I play me against the world every night and mornin'

She ain't dead, but she's gone

And you rappin' cap, I couldn't fit

I wrote this on the book paper, I folded it four ways

Melt it to a P of rocks in California, I don't know if it gets there

Signed it with my whole name like you know me like you care

If you get this, thank you for the shit that kept me here

Love, Ghost

Three weeks later, the radio said a motherfucker got snot in Vegas

I dropped the bowl I was eating from, I dropped everything

They played dumb shit all night, and I sat on the porch till the sun

Crying like a bitch because a nigga I never met was gone

I decided right there, I carry what you carry, pick

the pen, you tried to run it till my knuckles cracked

My brother laughed, called me a copycat

Fuck him, I'm doing this for you, for the kid on the block with no dad

I ain't got your voice, but I got your hunger

Rest easy, Pac, I'm picking up the motherfucking slack

Nobody played my shit, nobody called, nobody came

I wrapped that open mic, the four dudes and a broken speaker

I sent tapes out, got nothing back, it's envelopes unopened

My girl left, said I was fucking wasting my whole life

I

when I almost threw it all in the river

Went late, lights off, writin' anyway like a fool

Fuckin' failure, that's what the mirror kept tellin' me back

Every verse I wrote sounded like a nigga beggin' for a break

I ate shit for years and years and years and stayed anyway

Nobody told me it hurt as much to mean it

Back when I was 15, nobody gave a damn what I said

Barely ate dinner to rhyme, better gettin' thinner was the plan

I could hear the beat underneath the streetlight hummin' in my head

Wrote my whole life on an app and never once read it again

They said I was nothin', said I was buggin', said I was dead

So I turned a closed door to a motherfuckin' pen

Kept the shit I couldn't say buried in a notebook instead

Every scar turned a sentence, every sentence turned a friend

Yeah, the hunger got a nigga up early and put me to bed

I was rappin' before I knew rappin' was a way to get fed

Then one night, a nigga