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Don Cervantes is not only one of the main narrators of Man of La Mancha, he also plays the main character and protagonist Don Quixote. (Remember that Man of La Mancha is primarily a play inside of a play.)

Additionally, Don Cervantes is also the author of the legendary Spanish epic Don Quixote that the play is based off. Talk about character development!

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For those who don’t know, Frank Drake is the producer that created the beats for all the songs on GNK. With the production being as stellar as it is, he obviously deserves props.

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YC is channeling his inner Basedgod.

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Double Entendre

YC has felt the weight of the world, or the problems of the world, firsthand. He understands that the seriousness of the world’s problems, and how serious they are, instead of only being concerned with himself and his being, like his chains, that seem to be the sole concerns of so many.

Chains could also be taken as the chains of slavery and racial discrimination, that are frequently brought up on GNK. These issues are large issues to the world and YC, however, YC still realizes that compared to the rest of the world, they’re still minor problems.

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Throughout this verse, notice the assonance and alliteration YC impiments through the usage of the words “weigh,” “wait,” “waited,” and “weighed.”

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Unreviewed Annotation 1 Contributor ?

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Remember, it’s like the Rap Genius founders always said:

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This image helps to convey the sheer immensity of decimals contained in Pi. The idea of a string of numbers going on without repeating is truly mind-blowing.

Pictured Above: How the number Pi lives its life

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YC has had a long journey, as both an African-American male, and as a rapper. He has faced many struggles and adversity in his life, and these over time have taken a toll on him. It always seems that what he wants is out of reach in life. Because of that, he is a cynic, no longer openly warm-hearted.

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YC, while employing some subtle self-marketing, also exposes a principal flaw in human beings. It would make sense for people to only wish to purchase things that were beneficial to them; however, if this were true, trillions wouldn’t be spent on cigarettes and other harmful substances every year, and GNK would have been a chart topper.

YC realizes that people don’t always buy the best things, so whether you buy his album or not ultimately doesn’t matter. However, he hopes you benefit by the meanings in his lines and songs.

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Our immediate assumption is to think of Polonius as a rat in the modern metaphorical sense: as a spy for Claudius. Shakespeare’s audience would be more attuned to the proverbial way in which rats caused their own deaths by revealing their existence. Harold Jenkins (p. 319) cites Taverner’s 1552 Proverbs:

Rats be wont to make… a noisome crying… to which noise many men hearkening forthwith though it be in the dark night throw at them and so kill them

There is also a similar instance in Dent’s Index (30.1): “The rat betrayed herself with her own noise.”


R.W. Dent, Shakespeare’s Proverbial Language: An Index (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983).

The Arden Shakespeare: Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins (2nd edn) (London: Methuen, 1982).

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