I Ain’t Got Nothing
The Temptations
All Directions, 1972

This album was best known for “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” but there are some other great songs on it as well, including a cover of Isaac Hayes’
“Do You Thing” from the Shaft Soundtrack that came out a year before, and this song. This album also contains the surprising “Run Charlie Run” — as in “Run Charlie run, the niggas is comin’!” I guess they felt like they needed to up the ante after their less incendiary 1969 song “Message From a Black Man.”

“I Ain’t Got Nothing” is one of those songs that is totally ridiculous and undermines itself at every turn, yet still somehow achieves the desired effect, in the case, being sad. It would be perfect for a Will Ferrell movie.

You know, every house has a door and every room has a floor
Every fence has a gate and every beast has a mate
Everybody, everybody’s got something but me…I ain’t got nothing

Every stove has a fire and every car has a tire
Every fish has a bowl and every shoe has a sole
Everybody, everybody’s got something but me…I ain’t got nothing

Now I don’t care about politics and things across the see
All I want, all I want to do is love, and have somebody love me

I need, I need somebody

Every lion has a den and every little pig has a its pen
Every road has a way and they tell me every dog has its day
Everybody, everybody’s got something but me

I ain’t got nothing
I ain’t got nothing
Oh no…

(repeat)

>> right-click –> here to download the 192 kbps version [5.2 MB] and here for the 320 kbps version [8.6 MB].

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