I gotta free my mind (4X)

I gotta free my mind free my mind
Yeah, I gotta free my mind free my mind
I gotta free my mind free my mind
Yeah? I gotta free my mind free my mind

From sand docks to auction blocks to R&B
from hip-hop, how many rappers flip-flop to get props?
Signed the dotted line but didn't read through the costs
(When your album sits on the desk) "That's when ya lost!"
Followed your label's notion no promotion now you're audi
And that's the type of moves that make an artist act rowdy
Emcees fallin victim to financial, seduction
Then watchin creative weight extracted, like liposuction
Your A&R like C'n'R got many styles to suit ya
But if it's false to me I've never been an ass smoocher
Since I don't brainwash minds, with talkin nines and
how I shoot ya, it seems no multi-million dollar contract's
in my future, I could swallow the bait and get gassed
like petroleum, but contracts break like Rock Steady
on linoleum, no wack'n in my format, no Grammy awards
Rap over break loops and samples, no R&B chords
On a mission from God, to make the concious souls nod
when I'm rhymin, I take tracks of coal and then
compress em to a diamond, I'm in the mindstate
to escalate, when all rappers participate
it's fate for rap to elevate

Chorus: repeat 2X

I gotta free my mind (yo as a matter of fact)
I gotta free my mind (we're not goin out like that)
I gotta free my mind (we got the power to stay)
"Other rappers, they went slip slidin away"

You're goin, downtown to leave your mark on the biz
You reminisce, you and your A&R was first friends
You got talent and you ain't afraid to splurge hip-hop
Better thrills than Jordan alley-oops the pill but still
got verbals like murder, so call on Perry Mason
Twenty-five to life, is what I'm facin, for this fate's in
the element of fine print I've read it and overseen
by judgmental pompous ass phonetics, the critic
I'm still the rapper for the rhymes that he expresses
or manifestes, no frontin, I wrote the shit while blunted
Take control, don't be a fuckin fish on a pole
Label'sll leave you murdered in a river with no soul
it's true, for what you say is what you do with the flow
For labels MC's come and they go, but BUMS
we leave our mark for hip-hop's devestation
In our strive to stay alive for my record's elevation

Chorus

I gotta free my mind free my mind
Yeah, I gotta free my mind free my mind
I gotta free my mind free my mind
Yeah? I gotta free my mind free my mind