Nielson SoundScan is a service that tracks music sales.

Pusha doesn’t need SoundScan to get rich. He goes diamond on his blocka by selling (“laying”) bricks of cocaine.

Also, albums with poor sales are called bricks (similar to the usage of “brick” in basketball). So a “bricklayer” is someone who can’t make a successful album for their life.

‘Cuz you know what they say about manual labor…

Note

Another, more far-fetched interpretation of this line is that Pusha does not track his cocaine sales (with SoundScan) as that would be more potential evidence for a court case against him were the records found.

“Nothing is for certain” and “until they close the curtain” are lifted from the hook of “Aquemini”, the title track to OutKast’s third album.

Even the sun goes down, heroes eventually die
Horoscopes often lie and sometimes “y"
Nothin' is for sure, nothin' is for certain, nothin' lasts forever,
But until they close the curtain, it’s him and I — Aquemini

Gunplay uses some football terminology here.

• He says “play on the yay (cocaine)”, alluding to the strategy involved in dope dealing what with the deadly business deals and rival crews and police dodging and all.
• He then uses “field goal” to signify how close he and his partners are to some serious dough (“we ‘bout to reload the safe”).

Time = money. C-notes are 100 dollar bills.

The Muller refers to a brand of Swiss watches founded by Franck Muller. Jay-Z mentioned the brand on “Gotta Have It”.

Although Bronsolini has only been rapping professionally for a little over a year, he makes it clear he’s been nice since the 90s, back when Gary Payton played. Gary was one of the greatest point guards, who was with the Seattle Supersonics from 1990-2003.

Booze (“living in the bottle”) has been many a man’s refuge in times of distress.

These lines might be inspired by Nas’s father, Olu Dara, a blues-inflected jazz musician, but moreover, Olu Dara had a rocky relationship with his wife and Nas’s mother, Anne Jones. Dara was feautured on Nas’s tribute to his mother, “Dance”, from his album God’s Son.

Nas might also be speaking about himself as he had a nasty divorce with Kelis, especially since he says “Writin' songs is how we solvin' the problem”. Nas’s latest album, Life Is Good deals with his personal life, including his marriage to Kelis.

How can a heterosexual (or bisexual) women not be attracted to this handsome mug?

Kanye echoes L’s supreme cockiness on “Bring Me Down.”

Your girl don’t like me, how long has she been gay?

Oddisee has said before that his musical compositions are planned not only through an artistic lens, but also a business lens. The “coulds” are what Oddisee does when not thinking about business and consumer reception. Peep this interview with Complex Magazine.

I will say that moving to D.C., it was right in the same time where I had a mental shift. But not because I moved, it was just a coincidence that at that time my mind kind of shifted toward thinking about music with a lot more of a business sense and using a lot of the things that I’d learned over my career and applying them directly to my own artistry, applying them to my own marketing.

Ross starts this line off as though his leadership skills are visible, but ends up alluding to his ability to steal an artist’s thunder on their own song.

When Ross recites this line during this song’s video, the camera cuts to a spread of magazines he’s covered, where he’s provided the magazines with feature stories.

This could also be a reference to his extensive list of guest appearances, in which Complex once detailed.

Ain’t nobody else in Oddisee’s pedigree of MCing.

He’s playing on the dual meaning of “spit.”

• The regular degular mouth spit and “spit” used as a synonym for aggresively rapping.

The swab test dashed their hopes against the rocks.