CaLifornication

Let me tell you something about my city,

No, it's not always pretty

The sun don't always shine

And the streets ain't paved with gold – but they're mine...

Every crack and every crevice

Just adds to it's essence

A city of both grandeur and grotesque

Hard to capture it all in one shot but clearly picturesque

So rich it's in rags, so poor it's on rims

No need for them in the winter but we rock bubbles and tims

When summer hits the heat rises as does the crime

Police can't solve the cases, they don't have the time

Between profiling and filling quotas

Who has time to investigate, who has time to find motives

If they're black and brown it must be gang violence

This is a city too loud to live with death in silence

My city tends to bear bitter fruit, long lived strange

Switched poplars for palm trees, liquor store neon signs for flames

The land where everything blings, the Kingdom of Conspicuous Consumption

Trying to keep up with the Joneses under the blind assumption

That we've gotta shine til our hearts stop

A city full of underdogs always tryna show they on top

While america's sweethearts try to blend in to the scenery

Palm trees and mary jane, most (in)famous part of our greenery

But we're more than the glamour, much more than the glitz

More than Friday, more than Poetic Justice

More than salesmen in tees, more than hustlers in ties

There's so much here to soak in, so many different lives

Every dream is unique but the goals are the same

Somehow beat the odds in this rigged game

Behind the red and blue, behind the black and white

Behind the black and brown wars, behind the constant flight or fight

Strip away the degeneration and defeat, peel away the fortune and fame

Here lies a city that people fall in love with at the thought of its name

Guilty of breaking hearts in the winter, prone to spring and summer flings

We've got the City of Angels struggling to fly in the sunshine with wax wings

"To live and die in LA, it's the place to be You've got to be there to know it, what everybody wanna see" by 2pac