Bakez0151
Mummy, I'm sorry, I'm thinking with a hollow mind
A shallow heart lost, trying to follow signs
Trying to do right but I'm left with a life of crime
I'm in the hood like pissy steps or a line of white
This life of mine, ain't the life I like
But it is what it is so I like to write
These thoughts down line for line
Let me tell you about this life of mine K-Koke (Ft. Don Jaga) – Tell You How My Life Is
A shallow heart lost, trying to follow signs
Trying to do right but I'm left with a life of crime
I'm in the hood like pissy steps or a line of white
This life of mine, ain't the life I like
But it is what it is so I like to write
These thoughts down line for line
Let me tell you about this life of mine K-Koke (Ft. Don Jaga) – Tell You How My Life Is
More intuitive listeners will pick up on the fact that not everything Jay-Z raps about is supposed to be auto-biographical, indeed, most of it isn’t. It’s a work of art. Jay-Z is telling 3 different stories in this song. This verse is from the perspective of someone who has gone to prison and is writing to his Mom in an attempt to make her understand why.
I’d say the reference to Obama makes it almost seem as if being ‘born in the trap’ is simply being born an African-American. The two are hard to separate.
More to the feel of the verse is that the thought that a black man could attain such a level of success as Jay-Z is describing is ‘preposterous’, even to someone who is a therapist/doctor and has dealt with people with mental disorders… who would have told them many grand delusions and crazy shit basically… Even this shocks them!
What he’s saying here is that despite them attaining the riches that you would assume would move them away from the ‘ghetto’ risks, such as being shot at, it really hasn’t and is evident in BIG being shot. You can take the kid out the hood but you can’t take the hood out the kid.
With that is the suggestion that he’s one step ahead of everybody else, the all-seeing eye on his block.
^ I think it applies to both meanings, knowing Jay-Z, to be fair. Reference to Jay-Z’s more viscous street past and at the same time what you said.
Also a very clever reference to an earlier diss, undoubtedly at Jay-Z in “Come Get Me” by Nas. “You make hot songs but she know you steal from me"
The ‘hot song’ is too much of a coincidence especially considering how thought out Jay-Z’s disses are to Nas.
well it’s a different use of the line @MCErratic, still playing on the wordplay of ‘blasphemy’ but using it in a different context. there’s loads of words that people have used as wordplay, just because it’s ‘blasphemy’ doesn’t mean its bitting to use it. in this line he’s saying his younguns are willing to kill because they don’t have a religion, in the same way that they’d blasphemy
No he’s saying (or I think he is anyway) that he’s nervous as THOUGH he has a couple of pounds on him because of the prejudice cops look at him through because he is black. He’s nervous LIKE he’s actually got a reason to be nervous because of this racial profiling.
nah rih he got it after.