West Side Hori

Juse (beatmaker)
Tipene bay
Yeah yeah, West side hori
Now let me take you back where this brother started out
Just a chapter in my life I wrote song about
My mum was only young when she met my father 'bout
Twenty years ago she got kicked out of my father's house
I 'member asking "where we going Mum, what's wrong with Dad?"
"Just get your clothes and jump in the car" was all she said
For all I knew we was going for a ride
I wondered why this was in the middle of the night
And sometimes, we'd go to school with no lunch and no shoes
Nobody turning up to parent interviews
Nobody on the side line on Saturdays
Both of them would say "...oh boy, I didn't even know you had a game"
I didn't really understand
All I knew is that my father couldn't stand and my mother always ran
We was always stranded at some random people's house
Drunks singing through the walls with a blanket on the couch

I was raised on the west side of Flaxmere
And when I'm in the hood I reminisce on how we were back then
It's where everybody's stuck in the same rut
We didn't have much but it was always just enough
It's where everybody knows your name
The place I call home where we all learned to grow through the pain
It's, it's the place that made me strong
I got love for my hood so I show it in a song

See we got pretty used to it everyday they used to booze it
That's where I think I first got introduced to music
Engelbert, Luther Vandross and Lionel Richie
By the time I heard MC Hammer I was rhyming swiftly
91' Kriss Kross hit the scene
They were 'bout the same age with the braids they were mean
And there it was the beginning of a dream
I wanted to be an MC way before my teens
Straight out the boondocks where who's tough and school sucks
Selling skinny tinies out belt bags just felt bad
I'm gone' be a waste?
Nah not if I can help that I had to stay in school
Or probably end up in jail too, we made a few
Demo tapes in minimal takes and gave it to anybody willing to taste
It was that first lyric when I rapped I heard spirits
Knowing the ones closest to me would be my worst critics, yeah

It's the west side of Flaxmere, Paharakeke
Where every day's a test and your bound to grow some chest hair
We'll leave the rest scared, Tui be the best beer
Mob territory where they all dress red
And everybody's hard-up and you're lucky if you get fed
Back of the bakery for seconds just to get bread
Don't get arrested
Because the olds on the pizzle
And no food in the cupboards be the best bet
Where every elder in the whanau was respected
Don't answer back boy your bound to get a smacked head
Remember back when
They'd leave your brains leaking on the fricken street
Like the yoak from a cracked egg
And with that said, a single mattress
On the ground was considered lucky that we had beds
And thats a fact man like sardines
Probably why we all had each others backs like chiropractors

I gotta get it off my chest my story
They call me the west side hori
I gotta get it off my chest my story
You can call me the west side hori
I gotta get it off my chest my story
It's going out to all the west side horis
I gotta get it off my chest my story
It's going out to all the west side horis