E-40 - Don't Shoot the Messenger lyrics

I got love for real dudes
Good brothas don’t respect suckas
What want for myself i want for others
I had holes in socks and
My draws growin up stressin
Didn’t have a lot of
Money and material possessions
Pop warner and little league
Pitched played out field
Had a valet times hill and paper
Route to help pay the bills
My hood is a battlefield lots
Of talent a skill women smart enough to be
Journalists like federico winfield
We hollow broke we or got the latest iphone
A zap it or choke in the LeBron zone
Can’t remember your sat but to every e40 song
You can recite every lyric and rap along
We living in different day
Such challenging times
Financial binds, senselessness crimes
I was talkin to my og he did 20 for real
He said if i had some bread i wouldn’t
Put none of these niggas in my will
Because they turn like a steering wheel and
Forget you when you in jail
They didn’t write me or nothin
No commissary no mail
That’s what he said to me so i pulled out a g
Even though he used to run with
My uncle i was just 3
Years old with a snotty nose
And observing him being nosey
Soaking up game and ear husslin
While they trade war stories
Thugin and bustin, death and destruction
Chaos and catastrophe, triump and tragedy

Don’t shoot him don’t shoot the messenger

I don’t come from money i
Come from fried baloney
Starvin and thirsty eb key cards pop a murphy
Lord have mercy it’s brutal and murky
Out here on the ave
Where the mail man’s scared to come
In you can’t catch a cab
Me and my partnas be gettin together drinkin
Smokin herb
Talkin bout reincarnation comin back
As a bird
I was channel surfing watchin the word
Network cause i get inspired
When I here the ministry of Joyce Myers i
Use my Rushcard to order her tapes
Or should I say DVDs her’s and TD Jakes
Is it any good people left on
This earth that show pity
That will do anything for their
Relatives give up a kidney
But would their relatives do the same
For them i don’t know
You’ll be surprised how selfish people
Can be even kin folk
I can’t imagine me goin to
Hell the devil’s a liar
What you wanna be i wanna be one
Of god’s angels when I die
The pearly gates not the
Underworld in the afterlife
At the end of the tunnel will there be light
Will the sky be purple
Will the grass be blue
Will I recognize my family will
They know me too
Living on this earth is a test behold
When god call we can’t put in on hold
I’m just the writer not the editor
Here go my letter don’t shoot the messenger


Hey I like to say to ugh all the
Industry people out there to that ugh
Has control of what we call hiphop
Like for people to put more
Of an effort for hiphop
To be what it was instead of the culture of
Violence that it is right now
You know there’s a
Lot of things going you know what i mean
There’s a lot of people that put
In a lot of time, you the break dancers
The graffiti artist
People rappin all over the world
And i think it means a lot
I mean it means a lot to people like me
That for all my life I’ve been in hiphop
And it should more than
Just somebody standin on
The side a the road selling dope
I mean that may or may not have
It’s place too because it’s there
But i’m just sayin i ain't neva shot nobody
I ain't neva stab nobody
I’m 45 years old and i ain't i
Ain't got no criminal record you know
What I mean the only thing I’ve ever
Done is care about my music
So I mean so while we teaching people what
It is about life in the ghetto
Then we should be teaching
People what life is
In the ghetto me tryna grown up
And come up out of the ghetto and we need
Everybody’s help out there to make it happen
Hiphop needs to grow up and i’m a grown man
I’m a be doin hiphop all my life
I need somebody’s help to help me do
It so let’s get this thing done