Artist: Reef the Lost Cauze Album: Your Favorite MC Song: Black Opz Typed by: jostmatt at bluewin dot ch [ INTRO: Reef the Lost Cauze* ] Helicopers hover heavily above often not higher than the treetops that dot the battle field Staccato vibrations of automatic gunfire crack throughout the night drowned out only by explosions and sirens People hustle quickly past in a dangerous attempt to get anywhere the fighting happens to be heaviest There is troop movement throughout the cities and n some areas the fighting is intense These soldiers are engaged in a civil war A war without terms A war fought by any means necessary with anything at their disposal This conflict has lasted decades longer than Vietnam And though the setting is not a jungle per se its atmosphere is as dangerous and mysterious as any jungle in the world [ CHORUS 2X ] This is Black Opz, I ain't talk about Xbox This is war with drugs and gangs and black cops Watch your back or end up with your back shot In Philly it feel like we playin a game of Black Opz [ VERSE 1 ] Gunshots burstin, hear the fear in your enemies' curses Many things are not guaranteed, but death is certain In the bushes in all-black is an insurgent Strapped with a bomb to his person waitin to hurt shit The street level surface is filled with workers ( ? ) Trained in the weapons of torture And the oppressed just live with it It sound like Iraq or maybe a Palestinian village But if you change just a few details you see hell It's in the same streets that we dwell Where they hardly spar, they get their auntie's car Mask on like Mardi Gras and leave you harshly scarred It is God we call but when there's no answer it's arms we draw Hear the howls from the dogs of war This the place where you meet death You can't stop the game, there's no reset [ CHORUS 2X ] [ VERSE 2 ] Revolution in the hour of black steel, rats filled With the plague, attack from the black hills Stormin the bastille with a bat to smack grills Sellin sex, death, guns, crack, pills, your last meal All that's up for grabs Cops with batons got they foot all up your ass Hear the blast when that thing crash up the ave It's just a game, no winners, we all come in last Helicopters in the hood remind us hell's upon us The light shines on the manhunt, the hood Osamas And they baby mamas hidin hopin they don't find 'em But the black Black Opz swarmed on 'em like piranhas There's no glory to be found, no honor Kill or be killed or beg for mercy from Your Honor It's sad, fam, but the facts stand It ain't too different for an American blackman or a brother who's Afghan [ CHORUS 2X ] [ OUTRO: Reef the Lost Cauze* ] The war has been raging on for centuries The death toll is in the thousands The wounded unaccountable and missing-in-action is an unthinkable number But see, no one is keeping a tally And no one has noticed except for those involved in the fighting and those directly drawn in by geographical location, economic status or family association Other than that the war has been kept from the world hidden like an ugly scar across the belly of an otherwise beautiful woman Under the guise of being a showpiece for the world where prosperity is as found easily as water in a stream America, for all her beauty, has an ugly scar across her belly that she has tried repeatedly to supress and keep hidden from curious onlookers More than a few times she's almost been exposed, and this ugliness brought to light but always another garment would quickly be thrown over the rough spot and all the turmoil and ugliness would again again blanketed But not this time * excerpts from 'Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member'