"Escobar '97" produced by the TrackMasters is a 1997 single by Nas on the soundtrack Men in Black: The Album.
It samples the track "Move Me No Mountain" by Love Unlimited from the album In Heat. Nas also samples a line from Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Gin & Juice".
This song is also labeled as the 'Death of Escobar', where Nas dropped his alter ego of "drug lord Escobar" and adopted himself as just Nas.
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (December 1, 1949 – December 2, 1993) was a Colombian drug lord. He was an elusive cocaine trafficker and a rich and successful criminal. In 1986, he had a short-lived career in Colombian politics.
Escobar was born in the village of Rionegro in Antioquia, Colombia, the third of seven children to Abel de Jesus Escobar, a farmer, and Hemilda Gaviria, an elementary school teacher. As a teenager on the streets of Medellin, he would begin his criminal career, allegedly stealing gravestones and sanding them down for resale to smugglers. His brother, Roberto Escobar, denies this, claiming that the gravestones came from cemetery owners whose clients had stopped paying for site care and that they had a relative who had a legitimate monuments business. He studied for a short time at the University of Antioquia.
Pablo was involved in many criminal activities — running petty street scams, selling contraband cigarettes and fake lottery tickets, and stealing cars. In the early 1970s, he was a thief and bodyguard, and he made a quick $100,000 on the side kidnapping and ransoming a Medellín executive before entering the drug trade. His next step on the ladder was to become a millionaire by working for the multi-millionaire contraband smuggler Alvaro Prieto. Pablo's childhood ambition was to become a millionaire by the time he was 22.
Honies, cash, weed, cars
Ghetto celebrities, hood movie stars
Gat slingers now rap singers are who we are
Went from Nasty to Nas, to Nas to Escobar
The path we all walk, starts out long it's like a boardwalk
Monopoly, some make it around, some go down, it's prophecy
Happy days balancing with life's atrocities
Hoppin' in V's, knowin' some day I got to lead properly
High up in a five realizing the price paid
For this life laid in the light shade
One might say, top of the world's two whips, a crib and a girl
Quick to celebrate it, poppin' corks like they made it
Pretentious, arrogant niggas is senseless
Pro-ball players with white wives, peep they night lives
While you could catch me in a crisp white five
Dark tinted, dijon-scented, with Al Green on, my theme song
Love and happiness, how can it seem wrong?
I mean before this, I used to rock a taurus with the donuts
Now I grown up, got it chromed up
Got the rap game sewn up, sho-nuff
Niggas acting cool but it's really no love
I feel a slow buzz, off the dutch
This is everyday, every second
Got to make it pay, every lesson I learnt
Got me open while most of these rappers'll stay burnt
Honies, cash, weed, cars
Ghetto celebrities, hood movie stars
Gat slingers now rap singers are who we are
Went from Nasty to Nas, to Nas to Escobar
Money, cash, weed, cars
Ghetto celebrities, hood movie stars
Gat slingers now rap singers are who we are
Went from Nasty to Nas, to Nas to Escobar
With so much drama in QBC
It's kinda hard being Escobarro
Elderado Red, sippin' Dom out the bottle
My life is like a Donald Goines novel
We wave glasses like bravo
Drunk niggas with mad problems, and shot pockets
My niggas from the block rock this
Box cocaine, cook it and chop it
Looking to profit, in different ways
Goin' through this difficult stage, called life
But each year my physical's praised
Some fell beyond the reach of help
Cut in the street, thinkin' they could teach theyself
When all we wanted was a piece of wealth
And randomly, feed our family, the streets are insanity
Amply, living in this thug's fantasy
Richest nigga in show biz is what I plan to be
Heavy chain and my QB sway, living this king's life
Magazines write about me, in this dream it's all tight
Honies, cash, weed, cars
Ghetto celebrities, hood movie stars
Gat slingers now rap singers are who we are
Went from Nasty to Nas, to Nas to Escobar
Money, cash, weed, cars
Ghetto celebrities, hood movie stars
Gat slingers now rap singers are who we are
Went from Nasty to Nas, to Nas to Escobar
Now the main thing that boggle my brain be all the bottles of pain
Iced the chain and all the followers came
They tried to throw me off track but I caught that
They thought I lost that but I'm continuing to make more stacks
Halftime, New York state of mind, it was written was hittin'
Trips overseas, southeast, diamond and riches
Sleepin' on the plane wake up when we land
Feelin' real scared, on the ground
Rollie flush, princess cuts, and large rounds
The crews up, findin' time to shine rocks
It's real, you violate, be in a pine box
If it go there, I lay you before you lay me, it's crazy
I didn't make the game, the game made me
Records for the babies so they raised up in mansions
Haters keep hating, and ladies'll keep glancing