"Words are the medicine, two teaspoons for goons...

 a cup of it, for those thuggin it..."

So often lyrics or parts of a verse pop into my head and I think about blogging about them. Sometimes I go to listen to the song and realize that other supporting parts of the lines are equally as dope. Once in awhile I read and listen and think , hell this whole verse should be a post. Then you have those less frequent times when you pop on the cans and think to yourself, Oh yeah, this whole song is dope! I had one of those moments when revisiting Nas's Project Windows (Unreleased).




This has to be one of my top 5 favorite Nas songs of all time...and that is saying something considering his vast discography. This song is one of the seemingly endless number of Nas songs that leaked in the 90's that some idiot record label person deemed not album worthy.

The first verse is an onslaught of imagery, and the first few bars of that verse is a veritable blitzkrieg of those images. 

"Black hoods, cops and projects
Sewers flooded with foul blockage
The gutter's wild and every child watches
Chains and top locks with ripped off hinges
doors kicked off, drunks stag off Smirnoff, wipe your beard off
Crippled dope fiends in wheelchairs stare
vision blurry, cuz buried deep in they mind are hidden stories..."

The sparse track and understated piano are a prefect accompaniment for Nas's verses on this version. After hearing the "finished" version on Lost Tapes I realized just how raw this version was: it has no hook, just an empty space with the piano playing. The last verse on this version kind of just ends, as opposed to concluding. But when I heard it it the time, it all sounded perfectly polished to me.

"Stack loot and guns, teach the girls karate, school your sons not to hate
but to stay awake, cus the scars a razor make is nothin' in comparison
to the gas left on this whole mass, if we don't get it controlled fast"

When I heard Ron Isley was going to be on the official version it made perfect sense in my mind, Isley was just the kind of dude to bring this track home. It simply didn't work out that way. The openness of the where the chorus would eventually land served as a thinking space, allowing processing time for the previous set of rhymes. I suspect that he meat for a hook to be there all along because one verse ends with, "Ya'll sing the tune" but I still can pretend. Nas ability to recreate a scene and make you feel as if you are inside of it is unparalleled.






Black hoods, cops 'n projects
sewers flooded with foul blockage
The gutter's wild and every child watches
Chains and top locks with ripped off hinges
doors kicked off, drunks stag off Smirnoff, wipe your beard off
Crippled dope fiends in wheelchairs stare
vision blurry, cuz buried deep in they mind are hidden stories
Bet he's a mirror image of that 70's era
finished for the rest of his life, till he fades out
The liquor store workers miss him but then it plays out
so many ways out the hood but no signs say out
Mental slave-house where gats go off, by show offs
niggas up north, prison-ology talk, till they time cut off
You should chill if you short, prepare deep thought
to hit the street again, get it on, get this paper and breed again
Plan to leave somethin' behind
so your name'll live on, no matter what the game lives on



Yo, if this piano's the cake then my words are the candles
Light it up, make a wish, and them angels will grant you
Impatient, once tried, but in those angels and bamboo
they lit it up, *puff* *puff*, hit it up, *puff*
Now they dismantled, think the whole world is crazy, got a 9
watch where you walk, 2 dollar fine, sign of the times here in New York
Hi Satan, United Nations quietly takin, toll own your soul
take it or leave it, just my evaluation
Stack loot and guns, teach the girls karate, school your sons not to hate
but to stay awake, cus the scars a razor make is nothin' in comparison
to the gas left on this whole mass, if we don't get it controlled fast
might as well be, laughin' with Malcolm X's assassin as we die slow
perishin', brain dead from a Erickson
Words are the medicine, two teaspoons for goons
a cup of it for those thuggin' it, y'all sing the tune



Another day, another dollar, my mother would holla
She said "go and see the world for myself, and my brother should follow
Pops was smooth, from his top to his shoes
sang the Bules, guitar strings he played smokin' his Kools
Duke Ellington hat, picture this yo, 70's cat
He wrote his music in the back of the crib, I did my homework
At night the windows were speakers, pumpin' life out
a fight, people screamin' cus somebody pulled a knife out
So I look at this room, I'm hooked to this tune
Every night the same melody, hell sounded so heavenly...


This is how the other two versions end...

[But jail was ahead of me, and speeding like amphetamine
Reading's what I should've done, cus my imagination would run
I was impatient to get out and become part of the noise out there
I used to stare, five stories down, basketball courts, shot up playgrounds
and I witnessed the murders and police shake-downs
Yo, the hustlas and hoes, drugs and fo-fos
This was the life of every kid, lookin' out project windows]



Here is the official released version from the Lost Tapes album