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Jay-Z - Politics As Usual
[Intro]
You know how we do
Roc-A-Fella... forever...
[Verse 1]
You can catch me
Skatin' through your town, puttin' it down, y'all relatin'
No waitin', I'll make your block infrared hot: I'm like Satan
Y'all feel a nigga's struggle, y'all think a nigga love to
Hustle behind the wheel, tryin' to escape my trouble
Kids stop they greetin' me, I'm talking sweet to keys
Cursin' the very God that brought this grief to be
My life is based on sacrifices, jewels like Isis
And fools that think I slip, you fuck around
You get your guys hit, they built me to be filthy
On some I-do-or-die shit, for real
The price of leather's got me, deeper than ever and
Just think, winter's here, I'm tryin' to feel mink, nig-ga
[Chorus]
Politics as usual
[Verse 2]
I took my Frito to Tito in the district
Blessed me with some VS
Somethings I can live with: stop frontin'
And for the dough I raise, gotta get shit appraised
No disrespect to you, make sure your word is true
I'm takin' wages down in Vegas just in case Tyson
Have a major night off, that's clean money, the tax write-off
You ain't seen money in your life, when it
Comes to this cheese y'all like Three Blind Mice
I'm smokin' bros who pump Willie, I expose
The furthest you Chiles been is the Poconos
My portfolio reads: leads to Don Corleone, nigga please
10-year felon, heavy on the wrist, I faze yous
With the diamond flooded Jesus and blind your facials
For life... sharight, Jigga, I keep it tight, nig-ga
When you are a drug dealer, your “body politic” consists of your supplier, your customers, the police, and the competition. To paraphrase former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill: For a cocaine dealer, “all politics is local.” Producer Ski Beatz created the beat for “Politics As Usual” with a sample from “Hurry Up This Way Again” by The Stylistics, which producer Clark Kent also sampled and submitted to Jay later but Ski’s version was used for the album. Ski talked about the track in an interview with Complex: "We was working on "Reasonable Doubt" at the time. Anything I made hot, Jay was trying to have dibs on it. The system we had, we would make music first, he would reference it in my house. […] We would do pre-production at the crib, he would go home and get the lyrics memorized even more, and then go to the studio and re-lay it. He would just get in his own place, stare into space, and next thing you know, an hour later he got a song. He just wrote them and went in the booth, it took him two or three takes at most and it was done. I had done ‘Politics As Usual’ for Jay-Z, but Camp Lo wanted the beat because of the horns. And they was like, ‘Yo how you gonna give that beat to Jay-Z? What about us? You always giving Jay the dope beats!'" Ski added: "That’s one of my favorite records to this day. I think that was the blueprint to what Kanye [West] and Just [Blaze] are doing now, the whole soulful voice thing."
