A lot of people think that the President and the government in general should take care of everything in the country, they should improve people’s life condition, they should avoid wars, they shouldn’t raise taxes etc. without giving anything back.
Americans should support each other, pay their taxes so that other people don’t have to pay more, everyone should find their way to improve the country, somehow.
Magic Johnson was really hit by this phrase, so much that he used it constantly, in the form:
Ask not what your teammates can do for you. Ask what you can do for your teammates.
In his autobiography, Decoded, Jay-Z explains that these two lines are referred to the time when Vol. 3 Life and Times of S. Carter hit the streets one month before the release as it was bootlegged. After talking to some people he got the name of the guy who was behind it and confronted him at Q-Tip’s solo album release party but as he didn’t have any proof of it, Jay-Z was charged with assault. With these couple lines he tries to explain how hard it is to stay calm in some kind of situation, you can’t afford to commit an error that could cost you your entire career.
The line is also an expression of fear in the racially prejudiced Germany of the time. Fear is another main topic in this poem, as we can see in the following few lines.
Mercury is a brand of highlighters too.
Rim wheels of a car can be tuned, Kanye uses 26' on his car
and he compares them to the girl’s heels, 6 inches is the highest you can wear.
We can compare this skit to the beginning of the Odyssey.
In the first book of the poem Odysseus finds himself in Ogygia, a remote island, with the goddess Calypso. During a banquet she asks him to narrate his story. From line 170 on, the poem reads:
You can clearly see the similarity between the skit and this part of the text.
Odysseus is a hero who fought in the war of Troy and won it but he’s not even recognized by Calypso. He cannot be happy because he’s unable to come back to his throne in Itacha, Calypso fell in love with him and just like Dido in the Aeneid, she doesn’t want her loved to leave.
Kendrick finds himself in a very similar situation. He finds himself away from his hood, his desire of meeting with Sherane can’t be fulfilled because he’s blocked by these two guys who don’t recognize him from around there.
Both Kendrick and Odysseus find someone between them and their desire.
Jay-Z explains the origin of the “lucky left” nickname in the first scene of “Fade To Black”. He says that he believes that luck is an energy that flows around the world, and the night he was live at MSG for the first time he felt like the luckiest man in the world, “or as my man C-Thru would say: lucky lefty”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkYVcxyOFiY
I can’t edit it anymore now that you accepted it! Here’s a new pic
A reference to Beyonce verse in Kanye West’s See Me Now too maybe
The green light is the same light that Gatsby would see every night from his house, it belonged to Daisy’s port and it was the symbol of Gatsby’s love for her.
“Porsche panorama with the 4 seats”
Edited to “Porsche Panamera”