Yo, check it one for Charlie Hustle,
two for Steady Rock
Three for the forth- coming
live future shock
It's five dimensions, six senses
Seven firmaments of Heaven to Hell,
eight million stories to tell
Nine planets faithfully keep in orbit
With the probable tenth,
the universe expands length
The body of my text posses
extra strength
Power- lift the powerless up,
out of this, towering in ferno
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
Working class poor better
keep your alarm set
Streets too loud to ever hear freedom ring
Say evacuate your sleep,
it's dangerous to dream
For ch- ching cats get they cha-
paow, you 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 fifteen percent 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 Rick
y Ross all the crack
Sixteen ounces to a pound,
twenty more to a key
A five minute sentence hearing and
you no longer free
Forty percent 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 at PlayStation
This new math is whipping
motherfuckers' ass
You wanna know how to rhyme
you better learn how to add
It's mathematics
(The Mighty Mos
universal law
but two sides to every story
Three strikes and you biddin' 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 six million ways to die from
the seven deadly thrills
Eight- year olds getting
found with 9 mill's
It's ten P.M.,
where your seeds at? What's the deal?
He on the hill pumpin' krills to
keep they bellies 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 C.R.E.A.M
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 SSI digits
The system break man,
child and women into figures
Two columns for who is
and who ain't niggas
Numbers is hard and 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
Mos Def 
