First, take a quick look down any of those mean streets, baby, and you can line up the “able-bodied”: able to shoot smack, able to fuck kids, able to make a home outta a tumblin’ down assortment of rooms with no heat, no runnin’ water, and a broken-down toilet. Look down the street, man, and see the fiercesome beauty of the young girls’ bows, their mother’s fingernails, and immaculate kitchens. Watch the lost Ricans find themselves homes, building after building, brick by brick, learning plumbin’ and electricity like that, see the junkies rip it out later on tonight like tearing their grandma’s, sus abuela’s, hearts right out. Raunchy corazón, is what I call it. The hip boys wishing for more evidence of their masculinity lie up by our window blarin’ the latest merengue from Santa Domingo. Askin’ em to quiet down is takin’ yourself for an Anglo, some fool imaginin’ he could put a halt to la fuerza of our presence. Can you get to that? Cause you can’t play radios on the trains, white folks believe we done lost our music. Ain’t that a gas? Like what they can’t hear just don’t exist, man. But at night the Caribbean oozes out of the streets, negra, like how I’m gonna do you, right? Tell me, I’m lyin’, querida, can you tell me I’m lying, Liliane. C’mon.