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The 9th track and lead single of Gravediggaz' debut album 6 Feet Deep.

This is about one man, with many different personas within him, created at birth, as society forces you to be who you are not. Whether by force, or by intention, he describes in this song the works of his mind. How we’re evil, yet we still strive in ourselves, meaning there is good there somewhere, as shown when he attempts to escape his mind, hell, evil. All of the different verses are him, speaking out and from their view. First, he tries to justify it all. Then, he explains what happened to make him the way he is, how we was put through torment and horror and how he wanted to escape that. On verse three, this is him when one of his personas possess him and encourage him to gloat and brag about himself, even though in the back of his mind he knew it didn’t have to be this way and he took the wrong path. The last verse is him completely taken over, there is no good left, he has given up fighting and comes to a realization this was him all along.

The Undertaker Prince Paul described the process behind the making of the record and who the unknown “RNS” is who is listed as a producer

I’ll explain how it happened… RZA came in with this sample and we were like “yo that’s crazy let’s use that.” RZA was like I don’t know, it’s not mine, I didn’t loop this up my man RNS who lives around my way did it. I was like “yo, ask him if we can use it.” RZA said “man we gonna have to give him credit, we gonna have to break him off a little bit and give him some credit.” I said “yo whatever it takes to get the loop.” So when we looped it, we didn’t even get the real loop, we just took it off the cassette. I said “yo, ask him what the sample is.” He was like… “he got it from a car commercial.” I said what?! Get outta here! RNS wouldn’t disclose what the sample was at the time. So I looped it up and added a beat and stuff to it. I took it, programmed the beat, recorded all the vocals, arranged all the vocals and that’s when I met Shabazz The Disciple and Killah Priest, they came down to the studio. Shabazz heard the beat, just the beat and the loop and he wanted to rhyme on it and he killed it! He was the first one rhyming on that song and the guys didn’t know how to follow it because it was too crazy. There was no concept to the song, just his rhyme. So I had to sit down and figure out how I could make this cohesive because there’s no hook, there’s no concept. So I came up with the courtroom thing and then I wrote out that part. When all the rhymes were on, I put the courtroom part on and I never told them what I was going to do. I played it for all of them and they were like yo, how did you come up with that idea, that’s crazy! How did you link all that together! It was just an idea I came up with. I took it, recorded the vocals, mixed it and at the end of the day I didn’t care about credit, I just worried about the record getting out. Technically RNS was never there, we used his sample and it was through RZA because it was RZA’s connect so then RZA got credit but the person who actually put the whole song together was me, haha. So I never got the proper credit, but I didn’t care. If it’s gonna take RNS to get credit for this so we can use the sample, because it was dope and I had no idea what it was, RZA had no idea what it was, so RNS was the only person that had a link to that sample. Now I know what it is, but back then I didn’t know what it was. It all worked out. So when I see people like oh RNS and RZA killed the track… I’m like what?! Even the production sounds like me, you can tell. RZA and RNS ain’t gonna come up with the whole courtroom scene, it’s not their style. But it all worked out in the end, haha.

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Here, Missy references to when R&B legend, Miss Anita Baker left her record company, Elektra (the same record company that Missy was signed to) in 1996 to sign with Atlantic Records.

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Demonstrating masterful lyricism, three of the four Gravediggaz drop hot verses and paint vivid pictures of growing up in the slums, and how that formed a bond between men that would never break.

The song is the only one on the album produced by Frukwan, The Gatekeeper. Prince Paul (The Undertaker) explained the process of the song’s creation:

Yeah “Blood Brothers”, the original track was on a demo that he had. When I put the group together I listened to it a lot and I liked the beat so much that when we started making the album, I tried to get everybody involved so I was like “yo let’s use that beat that you had”. I think Poetic came with the hook and expressed it to RZA and Frukwan and they just wrote to it and that’s more or less how that one came about. We had to recreate the beat because there was a lot of samples so a lot of it we replayed but we tried to make it sound a lot like a sample

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A break in the serious, pseudo-political Wisdom of the Gravediggaz for the Gatekeeper’s horrorcore battle-rhyming skills.

Contrary to who normally comes up to mind at the mention of “Steve Austin” the line cannot be about Stone Cold as he was not in the WWF/WWE until 1996 while this song was written in 1993. More likely it is a reference to the TV show “6 Million Dollar Man” the main character of which was a superhero named Steve Austin

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A reference to 80s rapper and hip-hop legend Slick Rick. Slick Rick’s mother hired Rick’s cousin Mark as his bodyguard. Mark tried numerous times to extort money from the artist and Rick fired him, but a severance package wasn’t enough for Mark. He tried to rob Rick on numerous occasions, and also threatened to kill the rapper and his mom. Rick bought guns for protection. When he spotted Mark in his neighborhood, he fired at at him, one bullet hitting Mark; another caught a passerby in the foot. Slick Rick spent 7 years in prison for attempted murder after the incident.

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Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s ninety-watt stereos were popular, with Conion boxes being the most famous brand/build of boomboxes at the time.

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The year prior to this album’s recording and release (1995,) Tupac served a nine month sentence at the Clinton Correctional Facility for sexual assault. He maintained that he was innocent.

This is likely also an allusion to his All Eyez on Me song “Life Goes On.”

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2Pac pays homage to past hip-hop pioneers and reminisces over the times he and his homies were getting into rap, which was thanks to these very artists.

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He felt alone, and grew up amongst real gangsters

This can be translated to music today, where the dying breed is the MC

This can be interpreted 3 ways:

  1. Shakur’s family was heavily involved with the Black Panther party (a party standing for the rights of blacks). Most of the members of this party were hunt down by the “law” and sentenced to prison. However, Shakur’s mother was able to defend herself all alone, without an attorney, and avoided lifetime jail while still pregnant with Tupac. So, they are kinda like “dying breed”, the black panthers, the African-Americans and so on (because of the political oppresion on them back in the day).

  2. Rappers are a drying breed. The game changes, everything is becoming mainstream and about industry and money. Back before 2pac (the oldschool hip-hop prior to the 90s) was more about spiritual lyrics, self-awareness, social problems and so on. With the beginning of 90’s rap scene has become slightly harsher and way more industry/money oriented.

  3. The African-American race and culture as a whole is a dying breed. Police officers have murdered many black people.

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While Italian are commonly referred to as white, some Sicilians are capable of tanning very darkly, perhaps even enough to look African/black.

This theory is refuted by the boy not fitting into the Italian stereotypes of loving lasagna and pizza.

These themes would be revisited in the 2006 film Homie Spumoni

Not the most embarrassing check Paul Mooney ever cashed, but it’s on the shortlist

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