March with me now, heads March with me now
We are going, going higher and higher.

I used to think hip hop is what I do/ hip hop is what I'm into/ hip hop is how
I come thru on top of instrumentals/ I used to think it's what I jot with a pencil
or how best i can talk about what I been through/ The metaphors I like/ set of
thought I write/ when i get applause on mics/ I was never sure I was like/ I sure
this hip hop has a better cause in spite/ the little misconceptions said the voice
inside/ it can't based on the language I rap in/ or that little pretentious twang
in accent/ I think those are just irrelevant semantics/ I think hip hop ladies and
Gentlemen are had picked/ it's not whether you rap or write/ whether you wack
or tight/ hip hop is what you have inside/ and it's not my job to be here behind
this mic/ it's not my hobby not my career this is my life/

I used to think that hip hop is all about hits, hooks and mics/ freestyles, battles
scripts, books the like/ how difficult it is to spit and what it took to write/ till
I learned hip hop is an outlook on life/ I used to think it was all about the
women in vids/ being driven in wips/ getting rich living in cribs/ getting ‘em chips/
occasionally spitting em hits/ turns out, for a minute I've had it twisted a bit/
okay a lot, I had it twisted indeed/ I always pictured it be/ picking the words
out of a dictionary/ then convincing the streets to listen to this fiction I speak/
I was a victim of the television imagery/ I would wear a flag, a skull cap, and
on top a doo rag/ fubu cap and 2 sweat bands to match/ jeans hanging at the
thighs shorts sticking thought that/ walking cliché, hip hop's got nothing to do
with that/ in fact.

Before I realized hip hop was all of us/ I used to think hip hop was in the States
and the rest of us are followers/ I was quite alarmed to discover how wrong I
was/ and quite relieved to discover that it belongs to all of us/ hip hop is
independent minds, thinkers/ you don't have to write scriptures/ just subscribe
to the principles/ it's not just the elements, the heads and listeners/ without us
there's no hip hop, hip hop live in us/ I used to think that hip hop is anything
with ebonyx/ that has an explicit lyrics sticker on it/ I used to think that it was
songs with the strongest language that were dishonest/ a foreign culture that we
adopted/ I used to think that I could hear it/ when I cranked up the sound and
when I turned it down then it got clearer/ and when I looked through the
window I'd swear I was near it/ "hold on" it's not a window, I'm looking in the
mirror/

I am Hip hop, you are hip hop
We're soldiers in the true art of hip hop
and you've gotta give props, it's who you are
and not what you do that is hip hop.