Detroit Red

[Intro]
What they call you?
Red. Red and I ain't no punk

[Hook]
Detroit red, my name is Detroit red
Detroit red, my name is Detroit red
Detroit red, my name is Detroit red

[Verse 1]
Grew up in the world full of thieves, son of Earl and Louise
Yearning for greed, I was working for me
My Pops died on the train tracks
Whites left em laid flat
Cause my Momma fell in love with a man with a shade black
Probably got his brain cracked, scared as a little kid
Thought about law school, but that's not what niggas did
Cracka ass teacher thought carpentry was what it is
Still smarter than them little bastards, I was a wiz
My hair was red, no kind of coloring
All natural, tried to be the black Ed Sullivan
Moved in with Ella, I was clubbing it
Shining shoes suffering, so I started hustling
Train job, wasn't cutting it
I couldn't fuck with it
Serving white people wasn't me I had enough of it
Fell in love with Harlem, cool cats not squares
Old country boys in green suits and conked hair
I got drunk, smoked weed, ran numbers
Give me some skin daddio, I was a bad brother
Kalamazoo had my mother in the padded gutter
She went crazy when that man dumped her
Black hustler, turned down the army being in the packed bunker
Dreams of a Cadillac bumper, I was a gat sucker
Used to run packaged errands
Thinking back, I blame it all on my lack of parents
Midwest boy in Harlem with a whack appearance
Gambling pennies and tips into racketeering
Hanging out uptown, Sammy master pimpin'
Red fox cleaning kitchens he was stacking dishes
Man listen, I got fired from smalls
I had to prove a point
Selling reefers using joints, everybody knew Detroit

[Hook]

[Verse 2]
Man, I was on the cops hit list, never sent list
Was senseless, moved to 110th I still sell sticks
Drop offs because I had the pigs searching my [?]
This was way before Bill Russell was on the Celtics
Reefer money moved slow, started doing stick ups
Cocaine I had to sniff [?] to cure the hiccups
Had to pick the four fifth up without a mix up
Sammy tried to kill me because I smacked his bitch up
Kept gambling strongly
[?] numbering, getting paid from Archie
The west Indian man with good memory
He'll kill you in a heartbeat
Left Harlem because he tried to spark me, wrongly
Got back to Boston, and me and shorty was rocking
Sophia and the sister was down and we started plotting
Brought another guy named Rudy into the projects
Had to set him straight so we knew that was a problem
Wasn't afraid to die, started willin'
Emptied out my gun with the bullets I had inside it
Silence, it covered the room, I had it quiet
Put a slug back in the gun like a deposit
Let the cylinder spin then put it to my noggin
Popped it, nothing came out I started smiling
Did it again, they was astonished
But little did they know I had the bullet in my pocket
Then we started robbing, handbags and jewelry boxes
Going into the houses, sneakier than the mouse gets
Money out of wallets, clothes out of closets
Even when they snored lifted up arms and took watches
Did it for a while, until shit got obnoxious
Door started knocking, we got caught by the copers
Judge gave me 10, but not because of my chargers
But cuz Sophia and the sister looked like his daughters
2 year crime turned into a dime cuz of racism
I hate prison cuz I see it as a slave system
It's all good, should be painless, shameless
As long as Boston and Harlem know what my name is

[Hook]

[Outro from Spike Lee's 'Malcolm X' & The Documentary 'Park Ave']