ICE-T The Tower Lyrics

I'm rollin' up in a big gray bus
And I'm shackled down
Myself that's who I trust
The minute I arrived
Some sucker got hit
Shanked ten times
Behind some bullshit
Word in the pen the fool was a snitch
So without hesitatin'
I made a weapon quick
If found a sharp piece of metal
Taped it to a stick
Then a bullhorn sounds
That means it's time for chow
My first prison meal
The whole feeling was foul
It wasn't quite my style
But my stomach growled
So I flushed the s___ down
And hit the weight pile
The brothers was swole
The attitudes was cold
Felt the tension on the yard
From the young and the old
But I'm a warrior
I got my ground to hold
So I studied the inmates
To see who hd the power
the Whites? The Blacks?
Or just the gun tower!

In a blink of an eye, a riot broke out
Blacks put their backs to the wall
Cause it was north and south
A gun man shouts
And everybody had doubt
Until the bullets started fly'n
Took two men out
Thn they rushed everybody
Back to their cells
d___ the pen is different than
The county jail
I'm in a one man cell
I know my life's on a scale
I wonder if that gunman is goin' to hell
This is my second day
I got a ten year stay
I learned my first lesson
In the pen you don't plaay
I saw a brother kill another
Cause he said he was gay
But that's the way it is
It been that way for years
and when his body hit the ground
I heard a couple of cheers
It kind of hurt me inside
That they were glad he died
and I ask myself
Just who had the power?
The Whites? The Blacks?
Or just the gun tower!

You see the Whites got a thing
The call White pride
The Blacks got the muscle
Mexicans got the knives
You better be wise
You wanna stay alive
Go toe to toe with a sucka
No matter wht size
A fool tried to sweat me
Act'n like he was hard
I stuck him twice in the neck
And left him dead in the yard
It was smooth how I did it
Cause nobody could see
With my jacket on my arm
And my knife on the side of me
Bam bam, it was over
Another one bites the dust
I went crazy in the pen
With nobody to trust
Bench'n ten quarters, so I'm hard to sweat
Used a tat gun, and engrved my set
They call me a lifer
Cause I'm good as dead
I live in the hole, so the floor's my bed
And I ask myself again
Who has the power
The Whites? The Blacks?
Or just the gun tower