Willie Burke Sherwood

No matter how good a woman is, she still can't really

teach him to be no man or daddy

Used to walk around with a head full of naps

Chubby young kid with a head full of raps

Doing what he can, just trying to adapt

Jumped to the block off of grandma's lap

Jumped to the block, so did every emcee

But gotta tell the truth, yeah, the block wasn't me

Lookin' for adventure, but the block was not

The block was real, Woo got killed

Half a year later, Big Spank got killed

And I got robbed, and Ronnie got shot

And I bought my first tape by 2Pac

And I got hard, cause I was smart

I knew that the weak and the meek couldn't make it in

the street

Had to assert yourself to survive

So I convinced myself it was better for me

To be Jack in the *Lord of the Flies*

It's a book I read, books I read

Cause I'm addicted to literature

As a young boy rollin' 'round with the clique

Cause of that I was insecure

I was insecure cause I realized

Ain't no room for the civilized

When the wild men rumble in the jungle

And that's why Simon and Piggy died

Ralph survives, but he lives changed

Nothin's the same, shit'll drive a man out his brain

Drive a young man insane

My cousin Jimmy had a breakdown he ain't never been the

same

And he never will be again

If I could fix his brain

Take back the crack in his mind

Give it all back, you can have the racks and fame

I'd give it all back in exchange

This is for the dads and the grandads

And the little homies that ain't never had dads

This is for the uncles and the OGs

And the lil homies, and the YGs

This is for the men I look up to

And all the struggles that the men had to go through

For every man that's ever had to man up

If that's you, let me see you put your hands up

I lost my youth, chasin' my youth

Made me a youth in the back of a coupe

Teenage love, like Slick Rick said

I hit her with my Dougie and I had a gold tooth

Fur Kangol, Filas too

She was light-skinned red gold tooth

But of course it didn't last cause I had to go to

college

And she was still in high school

Damn, I'm a dad, this is bad

This ain't good, my baby's in the hood

And I'm walkin' 'round the black ivy league campus

Like I wish you house niggas would

So I go get a job, UPS

Where they treat you like BS and

You all know how the story goes

Drop out of college and sell 'ses

I figured I'd invest in studio time

Drop rhymes, have success

But, mostly I got fronted on, stunted on

Nigga dealt with some stress

I'll take that two, take that three

Cause my momma got to see me on TV

And my grandmomma got to get her Grammy

And my grandaddy got to see his boy eat

See his boy grow, I wish I never had that show

I wish you never had to go

Wish you could meet my wife, wish you could see my life

But you had to see the light

Wish I had you one more day

Wish I had tomorrow that's your birthday

We can sip gin, straight get fade

We can ride old schools through the trey

This is for the dads and the grandads

And the little homies that ain't never had dads

This is for the uncles and the OGs

And the lil homies, and the YGs

This is for the men I look up to

And all the struggles that the men had to go through

For every man that's ever had to man up

If that's you, let me see you put your hands up