R.O.T.C (Interlude) Lyrics

[Intro: Kendrick Lamar]
This is me thinking at 4:43 AM, June 6th

[Verse: Kendrick Lamar]
Sometimes I wanna say fuck rapping, I need money now
Like should I start trapping?

If what I write down don't collect this very moment
Then I'm on it, no question
In the streets, my niggas is well connected, let's see
Do I cop a pound of kush, promethazine or push some E?
Oxycontin have me laying on soft cotton when I sleep?
This is deep as the abyss, I'm not just rhyming on the beat
I be in spots, chopping the rocks like Flintstone feet
This is me, frustrated, battling my own evils
Finna saddle up that work across Ohio in a Geo
Or should I sell my music .zip to buy your zip
And hope one day it flourish to a kilo
Track record of a hustler
Rather records on the needle, making music
Clocking fast bank like a shot from Patrick Ewing
My nigga, what you doing on these corners whipping?
"I thought you had a show?" Well, my nigga, I guess I didn't
I'm tryna get this dough, and easy money sounds tempting
Especially when your homies pushing V8 engines
Twenty-two on twenty-sixes, Range Rovers rolling up
Three-fifty for an ounce of fire, I hope I got enough
This industry calling my bluff, I need a new solution
Curb-serving, or I might be in your store boosting
Two-elevens with Mac-11s like fuck hip-hop

Don't wanna be Pun, don't wanna be B.I.G., don't wanna be Pac
Just give me your funds, A.K.A. everything that you got
Or everything getting shot, for nothing
Leave you in shock, coughing up blood and mumbling
Watch, the plans of a young man sponsor
Moving grams like relocating your mom's momma
Then expand to the Hoover Dam, water, sherm

Contraband, they yearn for the butt-naked
Fuck a verse, verses get let off in thirty minutes, six seconds
I disperse to the world of unruly, where I put the mic down
And pick up a sack and a toolie, if you knew me
You'll know I always had a passion for riddling, writing
But lately, I've been thinking 'bout taking chances to brighten
My future financially, so please don't be mad at me
I gotta do what I gotta do, no shit
So I tell my nigga, "Front me, let me put it on the strip"
Then give it back when I think about the consequence
Shit...

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About

Genius Annotation

“R.O.T.C (Interlude)” features Kendrick Lamar’s thoughts on life and the music industry on a typical morning in June—just eleven days before what would have been his 23rd birthday, June 17, 2010. Since the money is not coming as he had hoped, he ponders whether or not he should discontinue his music career and become a drug dealer instead.

The title is a play on the U.S. Army’s Reserve Officers' Training Corps, a recruitment program typically for youth who want to pursue a military career; Kendrick reveals his own backronym during the outro:

R.O.T.C.—Right On Time Conscience

The chorus of the song is sung by B.J The Chicago Kid and interpolates Bobby Caldwell’s 1980 single, “Open Your Eyes,” perhaps most well-known as the sample that J Dilla used on Common’s “The Light,” released in July 2000.

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