The Tower lyrics - Ice-T

I'm rollin' up in a big gray bus

And I'm shackled down

Myself that's who I trust

The minute I arrived

Some sucker got hit

Shanked ten times

Behind some bullshit

Word in the pen the fool was a snitch

So without hesitatin'

I made a weapon quick

If found a sharp piece of metal

Taped it to a stick

Then a bullhorn sounds

That means it's time for chow

My first prison meal

The whole feeling was foul

It wasn't quite my style

But my stomach growled

So I flushed the shit down

And hit the weight pile

The brothers was swole

The attitudes was cold

Felt the tension on the yard

From the young and the old

But I'm a warrior

I got my ground to hold

So I studied the inmates

To see who hd the power

the Whites? The Blacks?

Or just the gun tower!

In a blink of an eye, a riot broke out

Blacks put their backs to the wall

Cause it was north and south

A gun man shouts

And everybody had doubt

Until the bullets started fly'n

Took two men out

Thn they rushed everybody

Back to their cells

Damn the pen is different than

The county jail

I'm in a one man cell

I know my life's on a scale

I wonder if that gunman is goin' to hell

This is my second day

I got a ten year stay

I learned my first lesson

In the pen you don't plaay

I saw a brother kill another

Cause he said he was gay

But that's the way it is

It been that way for years

and when his body hit the ground

I heard a couple of cheers

It kind of hurt me inside

That they were glad he died

and I ask myself

Just who had the power?

The Whites? The Blacks?

Or just the gun tower!

You see the Whites got a thing

The call White pride

The Blacks got the muscle

Mexicans got the knives

You better be wise

You wanna stay alive

Go toe to toe with a sucka

No matter wht size

A fool tried to sweat me

Act'n like he was hard

I stuck him twice in the neck

And left him dead in the yard

It was smooth how I did it

Cause nobody could see

With my jacket on my arm

And my knife on the side of me

Bam bam, it was over

Another one bites the dust

I went crazy in the pen

With nobody to trust

Bench'n ten quarters, so I'm hard to sweat

Used a tat gun, and engrved my set

They call me a lifer

Cause I'm good as dead

I live in the hole, so the floor's my bed

And I ask myself again

Who has the power

The Whites? The Blacks?

Or just the gun tower