"The Ghetto" is a 1990 single by Oakland rapper Too Short from his album Short Dog's in the House

Short Dog's In The House

Short Dog's in the House is the sixth studio album by Too Short. This album also features Ice Cube and the Doggy style of the album inspired many upcoming rappers including Snoop Dogg....

. The song was featured on the fictional radio station Radio Los Santos in the videogame Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a 2004 open world action video game developed by British games developer Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the third 3D game in the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise, the fifth original console release and eighth game overall...

. The instrumental was based on the Donny Hathaway

Donny Hathaway

Donny Edward Hathaway was an American soul singer-songwriter and musician. Hathaway contracted with Atlantic Records in 1969 and with his first single for the Atco label, "The Ghetto, Part I" in early 1970, Rolling Stone magazine "marked him as a major new force in soul music."His collaborations...

 song of the same name

The Ghetto (song)

"The Ghetto" is a socially conscious, mostly instrumental Jazz/Latin Jazz flavored anthem, released as the first single off American soul singer Donny Hathaway's debut album, Everything Is Everything, released as a single in 1970 on Atlantic Records....

. The song discusses the struggles of living in the ghetto and the difficulty of getting out of the ghetto to live a more successful life. It also discusses issues such as drug abuse and racial pride. Too Short is mostly known for his raps relating to sex

Sexual intercourse

Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...

and women, however he did have some songs with a deeper message and serious economic and social commentary. "The Ghetto" being an example of this.

On the cassette version of the album Short Dog's in the House, "The Ghetto" is extended to 5:58, which features a segment of one of the Last Poets' speeches "Die Nigga". After Too Short's 4th verse, he says "For all you brothas runnin' around here usin' that "n-word", lets the original rappers kick the last verse", for which then the segment comes in.

Chart positions

Chart	Position
Hot Rap Singles	3
Hot Dance Musica/Maxi-Singles Sales	23
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks	12
Billboard Hot 100	42