What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

Explained best by Scott Thill in Wired magazine:

[“Request Denied”] kicks off with a sample of William S. Burroughs reading from his 1961 cut-up novel The Soft Machine, the Beat writer’s influential metaphor for human bodies under siege from control mechanisms. The insurgent exhortation of “Request Denied” … fits the Occupy millennium like a Mugwump straitjacket.

And El-P says of Burroughs in the same interview:

He’s actually one of the authors that really meant something to me as a teenager. There’s a point in tragedy and fear, in the almost impenetrable scope of the disaster the we have created for ourselves, where everything reverses. Where that tragedy and fear gets sucked through the other end and comes out absolutely hilarious and ridiculous. For someone like myself, that reversal is a saving grace.

This intro is very similar to opening of Fantastic Damage, his first album, released in 2002. It opens with instrumentals, a quote-sample, and then further instrumentals for a minute or so. The same is true for his second album I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead. Cancer 4 Cure was released a decade after his first album, in 2012, and follows a very similar pattern in the opening.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

El says “I design kill pain cave penmanship” on Aesop Rock’s “Rickety Rackety.” Both lines refer to his music-making process, often alone in his apartment, as a cathartic one.

The “paincave” is a metaphor El throws around a lot. It refers to a mental state where you kinda climb into a hole of depression or whatever. Paincave kid talk would just be talk that’s pessimistic or negative. “at the end of the painbow” is along these lines.

In El’s own words in an interview with Urban Smarts:

“It was like a private joke between me and my friends. You know that dark, horrible place, where you can’t see an escape, a place everyone goes to but no one has a word for? No one could make it a noun, so that was kind of a joke with us.”

Update! El has been caught! “Pain Cave” is a song that was on Wayne’s World. El-P is great, but he didn’t come up with this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oAIh8BpGec

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

He expanded his drug dealing from weed to amphetamines, to the point where he had so many drugs he might as well have been running a store.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

“Request Denied,” the first track off of Cancer 4 Cure (2012), the fourth studio album by El-P.

This is a unique song and a study in delayed gratification: Instead of just busting out of the gates, El-P plays three minutes of instrumental before delivering one white-hot verse. Here he shows his skills as both a producer and an emcee.

This song is about his childhood, growing up, causing mayhem, and not giving a damn the entire time.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

Continuing the fish theme of the line above, Aes is saying make your escape: let go of the bait and get away! More generally, this means to let go of any “hooks” you might be fed by spitting up the bait and thinking for yourself.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

Kanye is most likely referring to the murder of Derrion Albert in south side Chicago back in 2009. Derrion was caught on tape being beat to death by a group of individuals. .

A similar situation (although not resulting in death) happened in the Chi-Town again in early 2012. A group of teenagers beat up a fellow student and filmed the video themselves (which is why their dumb asses were caught). .

More along the lines of this song, this line could be in reference to the pseudonym commonly stated in the hip hop community “Fashion Killer” as a contextually appropriate progression to his previous bars. He has several youtube videos of his fashion shows and him wearing certain accoutrement that could be deemed “Killing it” meaning dressing well. Killing somebody could be a reference to Dressing better than someone as he portrays the type that is well versed in fashion and thats in it self, is a major part of being a hip hop artist.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

Double meaning:

  • She’s changed. The person she is now isn’t the person she was when she was with him. Even though he’s inside her (and knowing her Biblically), he can’t know her.
  • In the sexual sense, “I can’t find you” is being used in a manner similar to the way he used the phrase here. He’s no longer able to satisfy her sexually the way he could when they were together.
  • Mentally, this girl isn’t with him. It’s ironic that while he’s literally inside her he is kept emotionally at a distance. He isn’t used to not knowing what this girl is thinking.
  • He can’t physically find her because she’s avoiding him. Hey man, have you seen that girl? That girl that I once had?

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

He doesn’t want the girl to bring her friends, he only wants her. This girl is a guilty pleasure of his–playing with the themes of the song, he’s disgusted with her hipsterdom but attracted to her regardless. She’s a fuck-buddy when he’s too depressed to find anyone else.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

Choose your own adventure:

  • An eight ball is an 1/8 oz of cocaine. “Busting a line” means snorting a line of cocaine. She means not only will she bust your eight [ball of cocaine], but she’s gonna do one too. (Because she has her own too.)

  • It’s common in rap battles that contestants get eight bars to prove themselves. AB is saying she’ll be glad to battle-rap you, and will bust your eight bars with her own.

  • Since the numeral 8 looks like a vertical pair of testicles, she’s claiming that she could make her opponent ‘bust a nut’, or orgasm, while she has one as well.

  • Alternately, she could just bust your balls, she’s so badass. Watch yo sack, playa.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

CG drives a yellow Porsche 911 with a Persian girl already in it. CG loves Iranian girl and Iranian girls love Porsches.

CG also loves Armenian girls, whom he considers the black girls of white people.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.