Jay-Z – Streets Is Watching (Audio, Lyrics)

Throwback to the Ski Beatz-produced Jay-Z song titled “Streets Is Watching”. Listen, stream, buy, read the lyrics, mp3 download.

Jay Z Streets Is Watching

“Streets Is Watching” is a track on JAY-Z’s 1997 sophomore album In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 and is the title track of the soundtrack to his 1998 movie Streets Is Watching.

One similarity between rap stars and drug kingpins is that everybody is always keeping an eye on them. Jay-Z struggles with being both, and a theme that runs heavily through this song is how frustrated he is at not being able to kill his enemies on the street because of his fame.

Producer Ski Beatz provided some background information about the track in an interview with Complex:

Jay couldn’t come up with a hook. That’s why he took the sample from the guy from Sleepers and threw it in there. He was like, ‘This is dope but I don’t know what kind of hook to add to it.’ That movie was good but it was Jay’s idea to use it. He’s definitely a movie buff, anything that had that energy of what he was representing.

British musician Labi Siffre’s 1975 song “I Got The” is sampled throughout the track, however Siffre wouldn’t clear the sample without the promise of censorship. As a result, the official versions of the song are censored – even on the explicit version, something producer Ski Beatz said he “never even noticed.” However, some uncensored edits can be found.

“Streets is Watching” was the only track from In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 that Jay was able to show Biggie and get feedback on, just before his friend’s untimely passing in March 1997:

The first song I made for it was ‘Streets Is Watching,’ which was the last song that Biggie Smalls ever heard. He made me play the record 30 times. We played it so much I just gave it him. I was like, ‘Just keep it!’

Jay-Z – Streets Is Watching (prod. Ski Beatz)

Lyrics

[Produced by Ski Beatz]

[Intro]
Uh-huh uh huh uh, gee-gee-geyeah
Peeping, watching, streets
You boys are soft like bread
Uh-huh uh huh uh, live from Brooklyn
Uh-huh uh, the streets is watching
Check it, check, uh-huh uh, check

[Verse 1]
Look, if I shoot you, I’m brainless
But if you shoot me, then you’re famous, what’s a nigga to do?
When the, streets is watching, blocks keep clocking
Waiting for you to break, make your first mistake
Can’t ignore it, that’s the fastest way to get extorted
But my time is money, and twenty-five, I can’t afford it
Beef assorted like Godiva chocolates
Niggas you bought it, I pull the slide back and cock it
Plan aborted, you and your mans get a pass
This rhyme, you’re operating on bitch time
Y’all niggas ain’t worth my shells, all y’all niggas tryna do
Is hurt my sales, and stop trips to John Meneilly
The type to start a beef then run to the cops
When I see you in the street got one in the drop
When I’d rather be on tour getting a hundred a pop
Taking pictures with some bitches in front of the drop
The streets is watching

[Chorus]
When the, streets is watching
Blocks keep clocking
Waiting for you to break, make your first mistake
Can’t ignore it

[Verse 2]
Now it’s hard not to kill niggas
It’s like a full time job not to kill niggas, can’t chill
The streets is watching you when you froze your arms
Niggas wanna test you when your gun goes warm
Can’t get caught with your feet up, gotta keep your heat up
Sweet niggas running ’round swearing shit is sweeter
Once you’re tagged lame, the game is follow the leader
Everybody want a piece of your scrilla, so you gotta keep it realer
Kidnap niggas wanna steal you
Broke niggas want no cash, they just wanna kill ya
For the name, niggas don’t know the rules
Disrespecting the game, want you to blow your cool
Force your hand, of course that man’s plotting
Smarten up, the streets is watching (it’s on)

[Chorus]
When the, streets is watching, blocks keep clocking
Waiting for you to break, make your first mistake, can’t ignore it

[Verse 3]
My street mentality: flip bricks forever, know me and money
We like armed co-defendants, nigga we stick together
Shit whatever for this cheddar ran my game into the ground
Hustle harder ’til secret indictment time came around
Now you can look up and down the streets and I can’t be found
Put in 24 hour shifts but, that ain’t me now
Got a face too easy to trace, niggas mouths got slow leaks
Had to hire a team of workers, couldn’t play those streets
See out of space like Mercury, you jerking me? Hectic
Had to call upon my wolves to send niggas the message
It said this, ‘Let’s play fair and we can stay here
I’m trying to transform you boys to men like daycare’
Ay there’s money to be made and, niggas got the picture
Stopped playing with my paper and, we got richer
Then hard times fell upon us, half of my staff had warrants
The other half in the casket lay dormant
I felt like life was cheating me
For the first time in my life I was getting money but it was like my conscience was eating me
Was this a lesson God teaching me? Was he saying that
I was playing the game straight from Hell from which few came back?
Like bad coke, pimp or die, was my mind frame bad?
Was niggas thinking simplify was turning cocaine crack?
Ain’t a whole lot of brain to that, just trying to maintain a stack
And not collide like two trains that’s on the same track
But, get my life together like the oils I bring back
In the bottom of the pot where no water gets hot
Got my transporter take it across the border then stop
To set up shop with a quarter of rock, here’s the plan
For three straight weeks, niggas slaughtered the block
But you know the game is food, it fucked up me and my dudes
One drought can wipe a nigga out, faster than the cops
And this unstable way of living just, had to stop
Half of my niggas got time, we done real things
By ’94 became the subject of half of y’all niggas rhymes
Public apologies to the families of those caught up in my shit
But that’s the life for us lost souls brought up in this shit
The life and times of a demonic mind, excited with crime
And the lavish luxuries that just excited my mind
I figured, “shit, why risk myself I just write it in rhymes
And let you feel me, and if you don’t like it then fine?”
The mind state of a nigga who boosted the crime rate
So high in one city they send National Guards to get me
Shit, bitch, who’s fucking with that? The streets