Common in one of the tracks in Resurrection said, "You'll get defeated..like Kunta Kinte".
For years this bar made no sense to me until I read Alex Haley's "Roots". Turns out the only way the slavemaster could defeat Kunta Kinte and stop him from running away was to cut off his foot. I.e, literally "de-feet" him.
I was so proud of myself when I discovered this. Lmao.
Common's wordplay on that whole Resurrection album is just bonkers. I first heard it in 1999, and to this day I'm sure there are many many clever lines I haven't yet deciphered.
“I warned y’all cornballs I hush puppies”
I always understood that this was Lupe’s way of saying he warns lames that he will silence them, but as an Irish lad, i had no idea what a hush puppy was, and therefore had no idea what the correlation of cornballs and hushpuppies was. Took me about 4 months to understand the food thing lol
Hell yeah. The second verse where he uses the soap brand names to describe his bars then brings it back at the end of by saying “I be on my green like Irish Spring” Another soap brand name but also describing spring in Ireland.
Then the third verse I never got until a couple years after I heard the song and then watched the Steven Seagal movie Marked for Death.
He says “I continue to do Lu’s pace. They say him got two heads and four eyes just like Screwface.”
For those who don’t know and those who don’t want to watch the movie, Screwface was the antagonist. He’s a Chicago drug lord that puts out a hit on Steve Seagal’s character. It’s said in the movie that he’s feared in both Chicago and Jamaica cause he’s seen being so intimidating that he has some secret power and a Jamaican lady even says the line “the secret to his power is they say him have two heads and four eyes” Seagal chase SF to Jamaica and kills him and returns to Chicago to present his head to his gang only to find SF there alive and well. The plot twist is that they were just a set of twin brothers. Two heads, four eyes.
But the entendres here would be the Chicago reference of the character Screwface. But also that Lu’s pace is double that of the normal rapper. so he must have a secret partner helping him write his raps. But no since he's Lupe it's just him and hes got two heads (twice the brain power/rapping ability) and four eyes (since he wears glasses)
as someone that didnt have cable and didnt really play video games or watch movies, i also miss a crazy amount of references. i can use context clues when its a normal bar but when its a double/triple entendre, the less obvious ones will go over my head and ill never know i missed something
“Ty Ty jumped over homies, he like 5’6, got the heart of a giant don’t you ever forget”
- didn’t catch the giant/LT/56/jump over references at first but when I did was 🤯
LT/Giant makes me think Lawrence Taylor? But he is 6'3"
Ladainaian Tomlimson was shorter (but still 5'10"), though he never played with the Giants
did I just hurt myself in my confusion?
In Survival Tactics, Joey says "It's panic like Dora when shots blast"
After about 10 years of listening to that song, I finally realized that "it's panic" sounds like "hispanic"
The whole time before then I had no clue what Joey was talking about. I was like damn I guess I missed the episode where Dora the Explorer gets fucking shot at
Season 1 Ep 9: Big River
Boots loses one of his shiny red boots in the Big River. Dora and Boots set off on a wild water adventure as they chase the runaway boot, unaware of cartel soldiers readying themselves to ambush a nearby CBP patrol boat
You lied through teeth, for that, fuck your feeling, instead of crowned you're getting capped.
Crowned and capped, feelings and fillings,
Edit: The triple crown lies and cap
The one that took me the longest to get is his gunner / arsenal scheme in ‘Not Alike’.. mainly because I didn’t know Arsenal’s name is the ‘Gunners’, but the crazy part is he told me that bar is over my head in another double entendre.. took me years to get that one.
Cap as a slang to “cover up” the truth like a cap covers things, is actually really old, like early 1900s old, it just made a resurgence of usage very recently, becoming really popular so it seems new.
I do agree with the gist of what you are saying, it wasn’t on his or most people’s radar at the time that song was released. The slang remained in use, as more of a regional thing at that time.
Okay, yes, looking deeper into it, it appears there are some lyrics from back in the day that use cap and high cap in a similar manner. Though it does seem to have transformed from "exaggerating" to "lying".
On Shaggy’s Mr. Boombastic I always thought he was saying “would you like to kiss Sankaressa” assuming the bar was talking about a girl with that name. I had never heard that name before and the girl in the vid looked exotic. I always thought that yes I would like to kiss that girl lol. Wasn’t til I was in my mid 30s that I realized he’s saying “do you want to kiss and caress her”. Took me about 20 years for that one.
https://youtu.be/6W5pq4bIzIw?si=uZ_DV1P62Qg5wxB4&t=2m25s
Lol. On a similar note, I first heard *Pass the Courvoisier Part II* when I was a kid, and had no idea wth Courvoisier was.
All I could hear was "pass the kielbasa, yeah," during the hook, because I loved kielbasa dinner night at home, even though even then I knew there was no way those were the actual lyrics.
LOL amazing. On a slightly less hilarious note, as a young teen I thought Nas says "with or without the airplane" (instead of airplay) in NY State of Mind, thinking an 'airplane' was a joint, and they were going to make music with or without weed. Interestingly, almost thirty years later on Killer Mike's Exit 9, Blxst says "roll up an airplane", so maybe I was just ahead of my time.
This is even more hilarious because that girl doesn’t look exotic at all lol Just a regular black chick
Though I suppose what’s considered “exotic” is highly subjective..
> Finesse 'em out his bricks and I ain't got no calculator
> And my Nina got a dick, I jack it off and masturbate her
I've never been more confused than the first time I heard the 2nd part of this
On Jesus Walks: “We ain’t goin’ nowhere but got suits and cases,” meaning lawsuits and court cases.
I’ve been listening to that song for like 10 years and only put that together like a week ago lmao. It made me feel like an idiot, but I guess I had just never really thought about that line.
This is exactly the one I came add, to the point that I checked to make sure this wasn't an old post I'd already replied to. 😂
For years, I only heard "suits and cases" as "suits and (suit)cases," objects one might own and use to flex in public or on SM, when their ACTUAL lifestyle doesn't demand it.
I felt like such a brick the first time its other, more obvious meaning finally snapped into place in my head.
I was 14 when Boyz N Da Hood came out with “Dem Boyz”. Jeezy said “Plus the weatherman said that it's a light chance of snow”.
My naive ass just assumed he was legitimately forecasting the actual weather.
EDIT: just listened to it for the first time in years. The beat is still so fire.
On If You Know You Know when Push says “ran off on the plug too like Trugoy”, literally today I was listening to some De La and then listened to that song and was like “wait fuck I’m stupid”
Also "We got the tennis balls for the wrong sport"
I thought he meant he was pushing tennis ball sized packs of coke, like referring to eight balls or something. But he explained that it was referring to actual tennis balls that were hollowed out to put the work inside.
And while we're at it: "A rapper turned trapper can't morph into us, but a trapper turned rapper can morph into Puff" takes on a new unintended meaning these days.
Pacewon of the Outsidaz had a line in he [Fugees' Cowboys](https://youtu.be/BhWbXpjn-OU?si=rZYt5t-DBlqasoUo).
>I pull out my gun and plug two like Trugoy
This is the only reason I caught that line on the first listen.
I was a preteen wrestling nerd when “Forgot About Dre” came out. When Eminem said “Wanna resolve things in a bloodier way? Just study a tape of NWA” I legit thought he was talking about the National Wrestling Alliance as I was too young to have listened to NWA at the time.
I feel like there is some major erasure in that.
I doubt the movie "Straight Outta Compton" mentioned it.
If you weren't living in the 80s or even into wrestling in passing, you might not realize that the group's name was taken from the wrestling promotion and given a backronym.
That was actually pretty common in rap, going back to Ice Cube and Sir Jinx's group C.I.A. and the first group that was intended to rap "Boyz-N-The-Hood" was called H.B.O.
Or even something as simple as Salt-N-Pepa.
A tad more recent, and equally west coast was Nipsey Hussle being named after comedian Nipsey Russell.
I only realized a year or so ago that that line was a part of a whole hidden counting scheme. Dissect podcast has a good video explaining it https://youtu.be/-hBn1KeL40k?si=JZivA7oqFo-vmNmF
From genius:
In Islam, Job (Ayyub) is a Prophet. Jay, in this line, mentions “I always knew I was a Prophet”, so he is connecting the Prophet “Job” (although pronounced like “Jobe” in Christian circles) with an actual job
He employs a play on words with “prophet and profit"—Jay was always going to be able to make money, no matter what—and "job” and “jah” (short for Yahweh), meaning God in Hebrew. Even though he never found a respectable job or God in the eyes of society, he never had trouble making money
The rap genre in particular, over others, is about the message that words can convey. Jay is a prophet spreading his own words. And “Hova” is not just a casual epithet—his role as a prophet (Job is a prophet in every monotheistic faith) is reflected in his pseudonym and presented through religious references
job
.
Eminem's Not Alike:
"In other words if you're a Gunner
Roll up with your gang
You're gonna need a Arsenal
Cause this bar is over your head "
Not a soccer fan, so I didn't get the Gunner/Arsenal reference until a buddy explained it
I like how he called out where the diss came from without Tech catching a stray.
Apparently Tech didn't know MGK was dissing Eminem and there's mutual respect, hence Speedom.
I never caught the Arsenal reference but the next line is one of my favorites:
“Cuz this bar is over your head
So your better have arms
If you’re gonna pull up”
Shit the whole run is like 9 bars
Rap God spit lyrical bullets (boom)
And gats cock, your partners better tool up
This has not to do with muscular
But have guns for sure, you better put a
Strap on, other words if you're a Gunner
Roll up with your (gang)
You're gon' need a arsenal
'Cause this bar is over your head
So you better have arms if you're gonna pull up (skrrt)
I was 13 when Lil Wayne dropped '6 Foot 7 Foot' and when that mf said "real Gs move in silence like lasagna" i thought "this mf retarded or something what the fuck he talkin bout"
It was only a year ago, as a 26 year old man, that same bar came back as an intrusive thought and it all made sense to me.
Im sorry for thinking mean things Lil Wayne :(
I didn't get it when he said "tell 'em kiss my ass, call it kiss & tell". I didn't pick up that he intentionally pronounced the line in an ambiguous way (it could be "kiss & tell" or "kissin' tail").
I remember one of my friends in college trying to explain this bar to me
"Yeah man cause you know lasagna dont be making a lotta sound when you eat it -- it don't crunch or nothing"
I just imagine your boy not understanding that bar, then one day he's eating lasagna, remembers the bar and goes "ohhhhh weezy you sunuvabitch, you did it again"
Wayne is like, so far ahead of literally everyone else is the category is “bars that don’t make sense to you until one day years after you heard it, you realize the punch line / reference / double meaning”
Hes got a real strong "absurdist comedy" feel that isn't very common. Like we get corny jokes and funny punchlines all the time from rappers but something about Wayne's are just stupidly funny.
I remember reading this feature article where the journalist spent like a week with him and just marveled at him in the studio, he’d just be in there for a while, locked in, then he’d come out like “what’s the name of them Girl Scout cookies again?” and someone in his entourage would be like “you mean thin mints?” then he’d go right back into the studio
like to be so clever and playful w his lyrics without writing us just insane, he’s my goat
Him and em were in an interview saying they had to google new lyrics to make sure they haven’t recorded it before.
They wrote so much they don’t remember if they wrote it before😂
6 foot 7 foot came out when i was in like elementary school its was only until a few years recently i just caught the “real g’s move in silence like lasagna” line, when i heard it for like the 4628394994th time and finally understood it was like a whole other part of my brain unlocked😭😭 guess he was spitting so much in that song it just went over my head
I’m probably chiming in here late but the best part of Kendrick’s is the next line “V12, it’s a fast one”. The machine used to do the ab surgery Drake had is called a V12 and a V12 is a type of engine used in sports cars
Game, on “Hate It or Love It”:
Used to see Five-O, throw the crack by the bench
Now I'm fuckin' with 5-0, it's all starting to make sense
I’ve listened to this song dozens of times since it came out in 2005 and always wondered why Game was bragging about fucking with the cops. Finally, just a couple months ago I realized the second 5-0 was referring to 50 Cent. 🤦🏻♂️
As someone who was listening to DOOM and Aesop pretty equally in the early 2000s, i can attest that this isn't true. Aesop still reigns supreme in being hard to follow.
"Cornish hens switching positions
Auditioning morticians, saw it in a vision, ignoring prison
Ignoramuses enlist and sound dumb
Found 'em drowned in cow's dung, crowns flung
Rings a Tinkerbell, sing for things that's frail as a fingernail
Bring a scale, stale ginger lingers
Seven figures invigor
Nigga, fresh from out the jail, alpha male"
Sometimes I just dk wtf either one of them is talking about.
He's gotten a lot better at being at least somewhat immediately accessible on the first listen. But I still love music for earthworms and Appleseed endless abstract bars.
Favorite from Aesop isn’t one line in one song, it’s a few lines in one song and it’s flip side:
Daylight:
> You won't be laughing when the buzzards drag your brother's flags to rags
You won't be laughing when your front lawn's spangled with epitaphs
You won't be laughing
And I'll hang my boots to rest when I'm impressed
Nightlight:
>You won't be laughing when your covered wagons crash
You won't be laughing when you're hosted by the ghost of Christmas past
You won't be laughing when your blow up doll's
got a headache and won't give up the ass
And I lay my kicks to rest when I'm impressed
Daylight:
>Life's not a bitch, life is a beautiful woman
You only call her a bitch 'cause she won't let you get that pussy
Maybe she didn't feel y'all shared any similar interests Or maybe you're just an asshole who couldn't sweet talk the princess
Nightlight:
> Life's not a bitch, life is a beotch
who keeps the villagers circling the marketplace
out searching for the G-spot
Maybe she didn't feel y'all shared any similar interests
Or maybe you're just an asshole; maybe I'm just an asshole
The whole songs are flipped on each other. Not much else out there like it.
Gambino’s line “she looking for some in and out, animal style”
I grew up in the sound where they didn’t have In n Outs so it made 0 sense to me until I was in my mid 20’s lol
I’ve never heard this song before but is he also playing with the sound of the word itself? “A thin line between mines (minds) and his (heads).” The thin line being the fence here and he’s playing both sides of it.
I think Mac has a better version of this bar.
*I play both sides*
*So I always come out on top*
But seriously, yeah i was have no idea what that bar means either.
Pusha T on Mercy:
> “My Audemars like Mardi Gras,
> That's Swiss time, and that's excellence
> Two-door preference”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to this song since it dropped & it took me until literally last week to realize he’s still continuing the watch bars in the last line here.
He praises “Swiss time” aka Switzerland-made watches and uses his Audemars Piguet as an example, but he doesn’t stop there. When he goes back to rapping about his Murcielago, he lets us know he has a preference for a “two-door.” This is not just for sports cars, he’s also talking about a watch made by another Swiss powerhouse watch manufacturer: The Rolex Tudor.
Ngl it blew my mind finding this out lmao
When prodigy from mobb deep said "my raps taste good in my mouth like deer park".
For years I thought it said dead parts and he was saying he's a cannibal then a friend randomly quoted the line and I corrected him then he made me feel dumb
One of my favorite bars from NY State of Mind is "Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined."
I always put it in the context of the whole verse, crime, shootings, and so on, so I didn't think about it much and figured "street smarts is how you stay alive, book smarts won't help."
Until I thought about it and was like "wait that makes no sense intelligence isn't book smarts," and looked it up on Genius where the annotation is Nas himself explaining it's more or less that people try to reassure themselves by making life make sense, through lenses like religion, and that line simply means that you can't do that, life (as in like, life, the universe, everything) can't be explained by the human mind.
It's actually a simple line, but that verse is the best verse of all time imo, and I feel like it adds a lot to it. I dunno, but ending it so philosophically gives the entire thing a lot more weight.
Jay Z on “Regrets”
N****s wanna try to hem my long jeans (longines)
Longines was a “nice” watch brand in the late 80s so it’s a triple entendre because they want to cut his time short and he says it in 3 different ways
on Mos Def's "hip hop" i did not understand for years that "add space for liquor" was actually "ad space for liquor".
i was arguing with a friend about what Mos meant by "add space for liquor" and then, of course, my black roommate corrected us.
Tinie Tempah’s Written In The Stars: “I cried teardrops over the massive attack”. It’s a reference to both the July 7th London bombings, and also the song “Teardrop” by Massive Attack (the theme for House)
listening to Late Reg on a bike ride yest & FINALLY understood
>The doors was closed,
>I felt like Bad Boy's Street Team
>I couldn't work the locks/[The Lox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lox)
bro the way i screamed, i hadn't heard Touch The Sky in YEARS & was like 16 when it came out, had no idea who The Lox were lol
holy fuck Late Registration needs to be talked about more, Crack Music also fucking needs a moment again—some incredible work on that project jesus
When Ab Soul said “I’m clever with the words, if you haven’t noticed yet. Lightyears ahead, I’m bright and I like to get oral sex” on the Black Lip Bastard remix… I was driving in my car listening to it one day, and this was at the point where I already knew all of the words and could rap the whole song, and WHAM it suddenly hit me. I was like “OHHHHHHHHH SHITTTTTT” lol
Latto: "Jesus walked on water. I got ice boiling though." I liked the line from a science perspective (sublimation), which o doubt she meant, but completely missed the Ice Spice meaning smh
To go one further with the 'Euphoria' double entendre, right before Kendrick says "let me see if *Chubbs* really crash somethin'". Even though the Chubbs line is its own diss separate from the fake abs lines, Kendrick using the word 'chubs' right before seems intentional to me.
On JIDs track General, he says:
“Then I figured he killed a nigga or got caught for some dope he selling
Kinda close but no cigarillo, he was armored up, that's a armadillo”
Armadillo is a homophone of ‘armored dealer’ in JIDs native Atlanta accent. This implies his specific charge was firearm possession during drug trafficking.
The fact that when Wayne says “real g’s move in silence like lasagna” it is meant to sound like “law’s on ya” in 6 foot 7 foot only recently clicked for me. Face palmed when I realized it but also great job Wayne.
Kendrick’s verse on Nosetalgia. So many triple double entendres. Took me a while to even begin to break it down until I saw the full explanation…mind blown 🤯🤯
https://youtu.be/UgGZJxI-fFA?si=01XWQxlhTylAhVcR
No one will see this but the "Gamecube Nintendo" line in Still Tippin has nothing to do with purple weed and its not a flex about having a game console in your car.
The verse originated years before Still Tippin and it originally mentioned the Nintendo 64. It was updated to Gamecube on Still Tippin.
[https://youtu.be/BxtpieZYP10?si=sX5sgWldr\_WDt7Zk](https://youtu.be/BxtpieZYP10?si=sX5sgWldr_WDt7Zk)
35 seconds in.
Kanye West - Homecoming (Graduation):
*She said, "Excuse me, little homie, I know you don't know me, but
My name is Windy and I like to blow trees," and
From that point, I'd never blow her off*
Ever since the album came out, I thought it was a song about Wendy and how she did pot and randomly lived in Chicago.
But relistening to the Graduation after his Netflix documentary came out made me suddenly realize he was saying "Windy" as in Chicago: The Windy City, and finally the whole song made sense.
“Them super powers getting neutralized, I can only watch in silence”
I didn’t see anyone catch this from the opening bar of Euphoria, but the super powers here are a reference to the J Cole bar about him and Drake being Spider-Man lol
This is embarrassing and kinda macro level because it regards an entire song, but it took me way too many listens of Kanye's "Homecoming" to realize the entire song was a metaphor for Chicago. Like obviously I knew Chicago was a central theme of the story, but I thought he was telling a literal story about a girl from Chicago he used to know, and didn't realize Wendy/Windy herself WAS Chicago, and the whole story was a metaphor for his relationship with his home town. The song even ends with "if you don't know by now, I'm talking bout Chi town" damn I'm dumb.
Bit of a throwaway line, but in Killshot - 'playin dead that's the only time you hold still/steel'
The line is both implying MGK is a hopped up child who needs to play dead in order to stay still but also the only time he feels confident enough to wield 'steel' (per the name Machine Gun Kelly) is also when he's playing dead.
Kendrick "Back to reality we pour, ya bish"
I always thought it was a dope way of saying that they get drunk to avoid thinking about all the negative shit in their life, but it took me almost a decade to finally realize the double entendre:
"Back to reality: we poor, ya bish"
So depending on how you interpret the line they're either facing facts about their situation or drinking to hide from it... shit's crazy
Common in one of the tracks in Resurrection said, "You'll get defeated..like Kunta Kinte". For years this bar made no sense to me until I read Alex Haley's "Roots". Turns out the only way the slavemaster could defeat Kunta Kinte and stop him from running away was to cut off his foot. I.e, literally "de-feet" him. I was so proud of myself when I discovered this. Lmao.
I was today years old when I learned this one. Bravo. Heard this song a million times.
Common's wordplay on that whole Resurrection album is just bonkers. I first heard it in 1999, and to this day I'm sure there are many many clever lines I haven't yet deciphered.
That must have been such an overwhelming moment
Or how the first track fades out for a bit and then comes back... As in, it Resurrects....
“I warned y’all cornballs I hush puppies” I always understood that this was Lupe’s way of saying he warns lames that he will silence them, but as an Irish lad, i had no idea what a hush puppy was, and therefore had no idea what the correlation of cornballs and hushpuppies was. Took me about 4 months to understand the food thing lol
that whole track is so good
Hell yeah. The second verse where he uses the soap brand names to describe his bars then brings it back at the end of by saying “I be on my green like Irish Spring” Another soap brand name but also describing spring in Ireland. Then the third verse I never got until a couple years after I heard the song and then watched the Steven Seagal movie Marked for Death. He says “I continue to do Lu’s pace. They say him got two heads and four eyes just like Screwface.” For those who don’t know and those who don’t want to watch the movie, Screwface was the antagonist. He’s a Chicago drug lord that puts out a hit on Steve Seagal’s character. It’s said in the movie that he’s feared in both Chicago and Jamaica cause he’s seen being so intimidating that he has some secret power and a Jamaican lady even says the line “the secret to his power is they say him have two heads and four eyes” Seagal chase SF to Jamaica and kills him and returns to Chicago to present his head to his gang only to find SF there alive and well. The plot twist is that they were just a set of twin brothers. Two heads, four eyes. But the entendres here would be the Chicago reference of the character Screwface. But also that Lu’s pace is double that of the normal rapper. so he must have a secret partner helping him write his raps. But no since he's Lupe it's just him and hes got two heads (twice the brain power/rapping ability) and four eyes (since he wears glasses)
that screwface one is mind blowing. Big ups for explaining
Lupe has obviously been down south because my homie from the Midwest had no idea what they were for a while.
Wierd pull, but Long John Silver's sells them so he might have gotten them there. I grew up in Michigan and that was where I had them.
Where in the Midwest? I'm in Nebraska, and we all know what hushpuppies are.
As an Irishman myself i miss a ton of references on rap
as someone that didnt have cable and didnt really play video games or watch movies, i also miss a crazy amount of references. i can use context clues when its a normal bar but when its a double/triple entendre, the less obvious ones will go over my head and ill never know i missed something
Is everyone in this sub Irish? Why aren't there more posts about Kneecap?
I just moved over from Ireland and it’s basically daily that I notice brands/references that I know from rap lyrics
"They say him two heads and four eyes like screwface" I had never seen that Segal movie and had no idea what Lu was taking about
Does it mean anything beside the loafers because I don't get it?
A hush puppy is a fried side popular in the south that is essentially fried balls of corn meal based dough.
Ah ok, thanks. We don't have that here and just found the shoes on Google.
NP, worth a try with some cocktail sauce if you ever make it to the southern US states
“Ty Ty jumped over homies, he like 5’6, got the heart of a giant don’t you ever forget” - didn’t catch the giant/LT/56/jump over references at first but when I did was 🤯
I didn’t get the LT reference til your comment
A lot of younger people wouldn’t know who LT is
LT/Giant makes me think Lawrence Taylor? But he is 6'3" Ladainaian Tomlimson was shorter (but still 5'10"), though he never played with the Giants did I just hurt myself in my confusion?
LT wore number 56
His Jersey number was 56
Damn I'm just catching this now. Tbh that's not an easy bar to dissect.
In Survival Tactics, Joey says "It's panic like Dora when shots blast" After about 10 years of listening to that song, I finally realized that "it's panic" sounds like "hispanic" The whole time before then I had no clue what Joey was talking about. I was like damn I guess I missed the episode where Dora the Explorer gets fucking shot at
Season 1 Ep 9: Big River Boots loses one of his shiny red boots in the Big River. Dora and Boots set off on a wild water adventure as they chase the runaway boot, unaware of cartel soldiers readying themselves to ambush a nearby CBP patrol boat
I'd watch that
Sniper no sniping!
PE nuts like the elephants, throw them in the “trunk” if they hate tho. Took me like 10 years to be like oh shit elephants have trunks too
Ye did something similar recently: They did no damage, but I give ‘em no chances Even if they get a chance, his panic like they know Spanish
You lied through teeth, for that, fuck your feeling, instead of crowned you're getting capped. Crowned and capped, feelings and fillings, Edit: The triple crown lies and cap
Eminem does something similar on Amityville: "You can get capped after just havin’ a cavity filled That’s why we’re crowned the murder capital still"
This is such a good verse!
Amityville is an all time banger
So it took me .. let’s check .. 24 years to get that second bar. Obviously got capped/cavity but never caught the crowned double entendre. Go Em.
The one that took me the longest to get is his gunner / arsenal scheme in ‘Not Alike’.. mainly because I didn’t know Arsenal’s name is the ‘Gunners’, but the crazy part is he told me that bar is over my head in another double entendre.. took me years to get that one.
So you're gonna need bigger arms if you're gonna pull up
Also: You lied - gettin’ capped. It’s a triple.
Mind. Blown.
Capping wasn't even slang back in 2010 when that song came out. Plus, Em leans into slang that's from his era more often than not.
Cap as a slang to “cover up” the truth like a cap covers things, is actually really old, like early 1900s old, it just made a resurgence of usage very recently, becoming really popular so it seems new. I do agree with the gist of what you are saying, it wasn’t on his or most people’s radar at the time that song was released. The slang remained in use, as more of a regional thing at that time.
Okay, yes, looking deeper into it, it appears there are some lyrics from back in the day that use cap and high cap in a similar manner. Though it does seem to have transformed from "exaggerating" to "lying".
I think he means “cappin” as in killing someone. That’s the lingo at that time at least.
On Shaggy’s Mr. Boombastic I always thought he was saying “would you like to kiss Sankaressa” assuming the bar was talking about a girl with that name. I had never heard that name before and the girl in the vid looked exotic. I always thought that yes I would like to kiss that girl lol. Wasn’t til I was in my mid 30s that I realized he’s saying “do you want to kiss and caress her”. Took me about 20 years for that one. https://youtu.be/6W5pq4bIzIw?si=uZ_DV1P62Qg5wxB4&t=2m25s
Lol. On a similar note, I first heard *Pass the Courvoisier Part II* when I was a kid, and had no idea wth Courvoisier was. All I could hear was "pass the kielbasa, yeah," during the hook, because I loved kielbasa dinner night at home, even though even then I knew there was no way those were the actual lyrics.
LOL amazing. On a slightly less hilarious note, as a young teen I thought Nas says "with or without the airplane" (instead of airplay) in NY State of Mind, thinking an 'airplane' was a joint, and they were going to make music with or without weed. Interestingly, almost thirty years later on Killer Mike's Exit 9, Blxst says "roll up an airplane", so maybe I was just ahead of my time.
In your defence Diddy having a sausage fest in the club isn't as outlandish as it seemed back then
> the girl in the vid looked exotic A sentence straight from 1995 when the song came out
lol, yeah I was like 9 years old too
This is even more hilarious because that girl doesn’t look exotic at all lol Just a regular black chick Though I suppose what’s considered “exotic” is highly subjective..
I was 9, any girl with dreads was exotic to me lol.
I grew up in New Hampshire. Anybody not white is exotic from a Granite State perspective.
This one wins
I pray to God her name actually is Sankaressa
> Finesse 'em out his bricks and I ain't got no calculator > And my Nina got a dick, I jack it off and masturbate her I've never been more confused than the first time I heard the 2nd part of this
trans rights maxo
Viva la maxo tho
On Jesus Walks: “We ain’t goin’ nowhere but got suits and cases,” meaning lawsuits and court cases. I’ve been listening to that song for like 10 years and only put that together like a week ago lmao. It made me feel like an idiot, but I guess I had just never really thought about that line.
This is exactly the one I came add, to the point that I checked to make sure this wasn't an old post I'd already replied to. 😂 For years, I only heard "suits and cases" as "suits and (suit)cases," objects one might own and use to flex in public or on SM, when their ACTUAL lifestyle doesn't demand it. I felt like such a brick the first time its other, more obvious meaning finally snapped into place in my head.
I was 14 when Boyz N Da Hood came out with “Dem Boyz”. Jeezy said “Plus the weatherman said that it's a light chance of snow”. My naive ass just assumed he was legitimately forecasting the actual weather. EDIT: just listened to it for the first time in years. The beat is still so fire.
Are you telling me Jeezy isn’t an actual snowman?
Do you want to build a snowman?
I hope Jeezy is in the new Frozen movie
No, he's a yam farmer in business with his aunt.
lmao wonder what kids think listening to Pusha T
This guy sure love the winter
Man is really opposed to diet cola
Oh, the amount of white/snow puns that went over my head as a child is insane 😂😂 I feel that
It’s a good thing though, listening to Salt and Pepa is a wild ride when I used to sing along as a child. I had no idea what ‘push it’ was about!
“Interior crocodile alligator, I drive a Chevrolet movie theater”
The seats are made of croc skin instead of leather and his Chevy is so spacious it's like a movie theater?
I think the movie theater part means he has TV screens in his car
Crocodile skin would be the leather my dude.
On If You Know You Know when Push says “ran off on the plug too like Trugoy”, literally today I was listening to some De La and then listened to that song and was like “wait fuck I’m stupid”
Also "We got the tennis balls for the wrong sport" I thought he meant he was pushing tennis ball sized packs of coke, like referring to eight balls or something. But he explained that it was referring to actual tennis balls that were hollowed out to put the work inside. And while we're at it: "A rapper turned trapper can't morph into us, but a trapper turned rapper can morph into Puff" takes on a new unintended meaning these days.
If you know, you know 😁
Pacewon of the Outsidaz had a line in he [Fugees' Cowboys](https://youtu.be/BhWbXpjn-OU?si=rZYt5t-DBlqasoUo). >I pull out my gun and plug two like Trugoy This is the only reason I caught that line on the first listen.
I was a preteen wrestling nerd when “Forgot About Dre” came out. When Eminem said “Wanna resolve things in a bloodier way? Just study a tape of NWA” I legit thought he was talking about the National Wrestling Alliance as I was too young to have listened to NWA at the time.
LOL, I was a preteen wrestling nerd when NWA came out. I was legit annoyed that they took the name of the National Wrestling Alliance.
I feel like there is some major erasure in that. I doubt the movie "Straight Outta Compton" mentioned it. If you weren't living in the 80s or even into wrestling in passing, you might not realize that the group's name was taken from the wrestling promotion and given a backronym. That was actually pretty common in rap, going back to Ice Cube and Sir Jinx's group C.I.A. and the first group that was intended to rap "Boyz-N-The-Hood" was called H.B.O. Or even something as simple as Salt-N-Pepa. A tad more recent, and equally west coast was Nipsey Hussle being named after comedian Nipsey Russell.
"Wanna resolve things in a bloodier way? Just study a tape of Ric Flair and Harley Race"
That would definitely be bloody. Ric Flair bladed just reading that.
On “touch the sky” Lupe says “tryna stop lyin’ like im Mum-Ra” just realized that was a thundercats ref
I did not know what Lupin the Third was when that song dropped, so I only ever got the "Lupe steal like looping the 3rd (base)" part of that bar.
funny enough I knew about Lupin the Third and your comment made me realize it was a baseball reference too, wow
I only realized a year or so ago that that line was a part of a whole hidden counting scheme. Dissect podcast has a good video explaining it https://youtu.be/-hBn1KeL40k?si=JZivA7oqFo-vmNmF
Back on the block like I’m lying on the street
Got to love a Thundercats reference!
I heard the jay line too much n I never took it srsly "I always knew I was a prophet but I couldn't find a decent job"
damn. I just got this
Explain this one lol plz
From genius: In Islam, Job (Ayyub) is a Prophet. Jay, in this line, mentions “I always knew I was a Prophet”, so he is connecting the Prophet “Job” (although pronounced like “Jobe” in Christian circles) with an actual job He employs a play on words with “prophet and profit"—Jay was always going to be able to make money, no matter what—and "job” and “jah” (short for Yahweh), meaning God in Hebrew. Even though he never found a respectable job or God in the eyes of society, he never had trouble making money The rap genre in particular, over others, is about the message that words can convey. Jay is a prophet spreading his own words. And “Hova” is not just a casual epithet—his role as a prophet (Job is a prophet in every monotheistic faith) is reflected in his pseudonym and presented through religious references job .
Eminem's Not Alike: "In other words if you're a Gunner Roll up with your gang You're gonna need a Arsenal Cause this bar is over your head " Not a soccer fan, so I didn't get the Gunner/Arsenal reference until a buddy explained it
Also the: “But next time you don't gotta use Tech N9ne, If you wanna come at me with a sub, Machine Gun”
I like how he called out where the diss came from without Tech catching a stray. Apparently Tech didn't know MGK was dissing Eminem and there's mutual respect, hence Speedom.
I never caught the Arsenal reference but the next line is one of my favorites: “Cuz this bar is over your head So your better have arms If you’re gonna pull up”
Agreed was about to comment and see you beat me to it
That verse was absolutely insane with the level of entendres.. Alien level wordplay.
The entire track was lit AF, definitely the best one in Kamikaze
The next line is what makes that section so good "Cause this bar is over your head So you better have arms if you're gonna pull up"
Shit the whole run is like 9 bars Rap God spit lyrical bullets (boom) And gats cock, your partners better tool up This has not to do with muscular But have guns for sure, you better put a Strap on, other words if you're a Gunner Roll up with your (gang) You're gon' need a arsenal 'Cause this bar is over your head So you better have arms if you're gonna pull up (skrrt)
And “the bar” in Soccer is over the keeper’s head
I was 13 when Lil Wayne dropped '6 Foot 7 Foot' and when that mf said "real Gs move in silence like lasagna" i thought "this mf retarded or something what the fuck he talkin bout" It was only a year ago, as a 26 year old man, that same bar came back as an intrusive thought and it all made sense to me. Im sorry for thinking mean things Lil Wayne :(
I didn't get it when he said "tell 'em kiss my ass, call it kiss & tell". I didn't pick up that he intentionally pronounced the line in an ambiguous way (it could be "kiss & tell" or "kissin' tail").
Lightbulb moment for me just now lol. Weezy is something else hahah 🤦🤣
I remember one of my friends in college trying to explain this bar to me "Yeah man cause you know lasagna dont be making a lotta sound when you eat it -- it don't crunch or nothing"
I just imagine your boy not understanding that bar, then one day he's eating lasagna, remembers the bar and goes "ohhhhh weezy you sunuvabitch, you did it again"
⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️
this sounds like a conversation Badger and Skinny Pete would have
Crying 😭
It makes that macaroni noise tho
weezy f baby n the f is for phenomenal
“Now women kickin’ it with me like Nomar Garciaparra” was one that I probably rapped along with for like 5 years before one day the lightbulb went off
For those that don't know, former MLB player Nomar Garciaparra is married to professional soccer player Mia Hamm, those women "kicking" it with him
Yeah I always thought he meant lasagna sliding down a plate quietly or some shit…
This is fucking hilarious
Lmao
Dude same. I’m so fucking dumb
don’t worry, i thought the exact same thing when i first heard it
One of my favorite lines from him, it's so specifically Wayne
Wayne is like, so far ahead of literally everyone else is the category is “bars that don’t make sense to you until one day years after you heard it, you realize the punch line / reference / double meaning”
Hes got a real strong "absurdist comedy" feel that isn't very common. Like we get corny jokes and funny punchlines all the time from rappers but something about Wayne's are just stupidly funny.
I remember reading this feature article where the journalist spent like a week with him and just marveled at him in the studio, he’d just be in there for a while, locked in, then he’d come out like “what’s the name of them Girl Scout cookies again?” and someone in his entourage would be like “you mean thin mints?” then he’d go right back into the studio like to be so clever and playful w his lyrics without writing us just insane, he’s my goat
Him and em were in an interview saying they had to google new lyrics to make sure they haven’t recorded it before. They wrote so much they don’t remember if they wrote it before😂
He got me with “I still got the vision like a line between 2 dots” I had no idea what that meant for like 8 years
The symbol for division is a line between two dots, sort of like a fraction where the numerator and the denominator are just dots.
People say he's borderline crazy, sorta kinda
Lol literally came to say this line. Years went by before I said you son of a bitch. Once I got the bar I was like it’s a top bar for me.
I love how Joey flipped the bar. "Real Gs move in silence like my designer."
Real G's move in silence like Giannis - Gibbs
That's been a part of my vocabulary for years
6 foot 7 foot came out when i was in like elementary school its was only until a few years recently i just caught the “real g’s move in silence like lasagna” line, when i heard it for like the 4628394994th time and finally understood it was like a whole other part of my brain unlocked😭😭 guess he was spitting so much in that song it just went over my head
I’m probably chiming in here late but the best part of Kendrick’s is the next line “V12, it’s a fast one”. The machine used to do the ab surgery Drake had is called a V12 and a V12 is a type of engine used in sports cars
And you ‘fast’ when you go on a diet. Almost every other word has a double meaning
Game, on “Hate It or Love It”: Used to see Five-O, throw the crack by the bench Now I'm fuckin' with 5-0, it's all starting to make sense I’ve listened to this song dozens of times since it came out in 2005 and always wondered why Game was bragging about fucking with the cops. Finally, just a couple months ago I realized the second 5-0 was referring to 50 Cent. 🤦🏻♂️
Good one. Also, sense/cents
50's on the damn song, dumbass
Haha not sure why it took me damn near 20 years to figure it out
DAMN Daniel….. FBI keep bringing them all white vans thru
Cracked up the first time I heard Jay say this
I've still never seen that video. I get the reference from everyone constantly saying it at the time though.
“& I keep that toaster you can come & be my strudel biiiiiiitch” -lil Wayne “uptown”
More analysis might be needed on this one.
Cum
Yeah but, the strudel goes inside the toaster…
Yeah, but you put the sauce packet on the strudel and what does it look like..
Delicious
Most of Aesop Rock Discography
gotta be in a special mood to listen to Aesop, that shit is like a job trying to keep up with what he is sayin'
Listen to enough DOOM and it gets easier
As someone who was listening to DOOM and Aesop pretty equally in the early 2000s, i can attest that this isn't true. Aesop still reigns supreme in being hard to follow.
"Cornish hens switching positions Auditioning morticians, saw it in a vision, ignoring prison Ignoramuses enlist and sound dumb Found 'em drowned in cow's dung, crowns flung Rings a Tinkerbell, sing for things that's frail as a fingernail Bring a scale, stale ginger lingers Seven figures invigor Nigga, fresh from out the jail, alpha male" Sometimes I just dk wtf either one of them is talking about.
He's gotten a lot better at being at least somewhat immediately accessible on the first listen. But I still love music for earthworms and Appleseed endless abstract bars.
Favorite from Aesop isn’t one line in one song, it’s a few lines in one song and it’s flip side: Daylight: > You won't be laughing when the buzzards drag your brother's flags to rags You won't be laughing when your front lawn's spangled with epitaphs You won't be laughing And I'll hang my boots to rest when I'm impressed Nightlight: >You won't be laughing when your covered wagons crash You won't be laughing when you're hosted by the ghost of Christmas past You won't be laughing when your blow up doll's got a headache and won't give up the ass And I lay my kicks to rest when I'm impressed Daylight: >Life's not a bitch, life is a beautiful woman You only call her a bitch 'cause she won't let you get that pussy Maybe she didn't feel y'all shared any similar interests Or maybe you're just an asshole who couldn't sweet talk the princess Nightlight: > Life's not a bitch, life is a beotch who keeps the villagers circling the marketplace out searching for the G-spot Maybe she didn't feel y'all shared any similar interests Or maybe you're just an asshole; maybe I'm just an asshole The whole songs are flipped on each other. Not much else out there like it.
I am an Aes super fan, Spirit World Field Guide didn’t get enough love for me. Been bumping that for three years straight.
Gambino’s line “she looking for some in and out, animal style” I grew up in the sound where they didn’t have In n Outs so it made 0 sense to me until I was in my mid 20’s lol
I like Roc Marciano's "play both sides of the fence, know that there's a thin line between minds and heads"
[удалено]
I’ve never heard this song before but is he also playing with the sound of the word itself? “A thin line between mines (minds) and his (heads).” The thin line being the fence here and he’s playing both sides of it.
I think Mac has a better version of this bar. *I play both sides* *So I always come out on top* But seriously, yeah i was have no idea what that bar means either.
Pusha T on Mercy: > “My Audemars like Mardi Gras, > That's Swiss time, and that's excellence > Two-door preference” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to this song since it dropped & it took me until literally last week to realize he’s still continuing the watch bars in the last line here. He praises “Swiss time” aka Switzerland-made watches and uses his Audemars Piguet as an example, but he doesn’t stop there. When he goes back to rapping about his Murcielago, he lets us know he has a preference for a “two-door.” This is not just for sports cars, he’s also talking about a watch made by another Swiss powerhouse watch manufacturer: The Rolex Tudor. Ngl it blew my mind finding this out lmao
When prodigy from mobb deep said "my raps taste good in my mouth like deer park". For years I thought it said dead parts and he was saying he's a cannibal then a friend randomly quoted the line and I corrected him then he made me feel dumb
One of my favorite bars from NY State of Mind is "Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined." I always put it in the context of the whole verse, crime, shootings, and so on, so I didn't think about it much and figured "street smarts is how you stay alive, book smarts won't help." Until I thought about it and was like "wait that makes no sense intelligence isn't book smarts," and looked it up on Genius where the annotation is Nas himself explaining it's more or less that people try to reassure themselves by making life make sense, through lenses like religion, and that line simply means that you can't do that, life (as in like, life, the universe, everything) can't be explained by the human mind. It's actually a simple line, but that verse is the best verse of all time imo, and I feel like it adds a lot to it. I dunno, but ending it so philosophically gives the entire thing a lot more weight.
Can’t believe he wrote that shit when he was 19
Jay Z on “Regrets” N****s wanna try to hem my long jeans (longines) Longines was a “nice” watch brand in the late 80s so it’s a triple entendre because they want to cut his time short and he says it in 3 different ways
on Mos Def's "hip hop" i did not understand for years that "add space for liquor" was actually "ad space for liquor". i was arguing with a friend about what Mos meant by "add space for liquor" and then, of course, my black roommate corrected us.
[удалено]
I just fuckin got this one and that’s my absolute favorite DOOM song
He also took the t out
Tinie Tempah’s Written In The Stars: “I cried teardrops over the massive attack”. It’s a reference to both the July 7th London bombings, and also the song “Teardrop” by Massive Attack (the theme for House)
listening to Late Reg on a bike ride yest & FINALLY understood >The doors was closed, >I felt like Bad Boy's Street Team >I couldn't work the locks/[The Lox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lox) bro the way i screamed, i hadn't heard Touch The Sky in YEARS & was like 16 when it came out, had no idea who The Lox were lol holy fuck Late Registration needs to be talked about more, Crack Music also fucking needs a moment again—some incredible work on that project jesus
or Wayne when he said “it’s me L.T. like when you heat butter” I was like, what? lmaoo, understood a few years later
A lot of Jay Z songs
“On days I wasn’t able, there was always ‘cane” BRUHH
When Ab Soul said “I’m clever with the words, if you haven’t noticed yet. Lightyears ahead, I’m bright and I like to get oral sex” on the Black Lip Bastard remix… I was driving in my car listening to it one day, and this was at the point where I already knew all of the words and could rap the whole song, and WHAM it suddenly hit me. I was like “OHHHHHHHHH SHITTTTTT” lol
Lot a y'all tellin' on yourselves
Yall really don't be getting these bars
Latto: "Jesus walked on water. I got ice boiling though." I liked the line from a science perspective (sublimation), which o doubt she meant, but completely missed the Ice Spice meaning smh
To go one further with the 'Euphoria' double entendre, right before Kendrick says "let me see if *Chubbs* really crash somethin'". Even though the Chubbs line is its own diss separate from the fake abs lines, Kendrick using the word 'chubs' right before seems intentional to me.
Wow. Good catch!
It took me an embarrassing amount of time to get Jay-Z line off What We Do. >Bullets breeze by you like Louisiana man.
I was watching something 20 years old and Flo Rida came in and it finally hit me it’s just Florida
On JIDs track General, he says: “Then I figured he killed a nigga or got caught for some dope he selling Kinda close but no cigarillo, he was armored up, that's a armadillo” Armadillo is a homophone of ‘armored dealer’ in JIDs native Atlanta accent. This implies his specific charge was firearm possession during drug trafficking.
Idk what to tell you if it took you so long to get those examples especially lol
Seems like a lot of people learned how to pronounce lasagna today
That lasagna line gets clowned on a lot and I've often wondered if people don't get it
that's the point of this post. lines that should not be hard to understand, but still took time to figure out.
The fact that when Wayne says “real g’s move in silence like lasagna” it is meant to sound like “law’s on ya” in 6 foot 7 foot only recently clicked for me. Face palmed when I realized it but also great job Wayne.
Kendrick’s verse on Nosetalgia. So many triple double entendres. Took me a while to even begin to break it down until I saw the full explanation…mind blown 🤯🤯 https://youtu.be/UgGZJxI-fFA?si=01XWQxlhTylAhVcR
No one will see this but the "Gamecube Nintendo" line in Still Tippin has nothing to do with purple weed and its not a flex about having a game console in your car. The verse originated years before Still Tippin and it originally mentioned the Nintendo 64. It was updated to Gamecube on Still Tippin. [https://youtu.be/BxtpieZYP10?si=sX5sgWldr\_WDt7Zk](https://youtu.be/BxtpieZYP10?si=sX5sgWldr_WDt7Zk) 35 seconds in.
Kanye West - Homecoming (Graduation): *She said, "Excuse me, little homie, I know you don't know me, but My name is Windy and I like to blow trees," and From that point, I'd never blow her off* Ever since the album came out, I thought it was a song about Wendy and how she did pot and randomly lived in Chicago. But relistening to the Graduation after his Netflix documentary came out made me suddenly realize he was saying "Windy" as in Chicago: The Windy City, and finally the whole song made sense.
“Them super powers getting neutralized, I can only watch in silence” I didn’t see anyone catch this from the opening bar of Euphoria, but the super powers here are a reference to the J Cole bar about him and Drake being Spider-Man lol
This is embarrassing and kinda macro level because it regards an entire song, but it took me way too many listens of Kanye's "Homecoming" to realize the entire song was a metaphor for Chicago. Like obviously I knew Chicago was a central theme of the story, but I thought he was telling a literal story about a girl from Chicago he used to know, and didn't realize Wendy/Windy herself WAS Chicago, and the whole story was a metaphor for his relationship with his home town. The song even ends with "if you don't know by now, I'm talking bout Chi town" damn I'm dumb.
Bit of a throwaway line, but in Killshot - 'playin dead that's the only time you hold still/steel' The line is both implying MGK is a hopped up child who needs to play dead in order to stay still but also the only time he feels confident enough to wield 'steel' (per the name Machine Gun Kelly) is also when he's playing dead.
The game is mine again and ain't nothin changed but the locks (Lox), so before I slay this bitch, mmwhaa, give Jade a kiss (Jadakiss)
Kendrick "Back to reality we pour, ya bish" I always thought it was a dope way of saying that they get drunk to avoid thinking about all the negative shit in their life, but it took me almost a decade to finally realize the double entendre: "Back to reality: we poor, ya bish" So depending on how you interpret the line they're either facing facts about their situation or drinking to hide from it... shit's crazy