Slug’s verse tells the story of a mother who watches her son transition from her “baby boy” to a drug dealer to an addict. She fights with fear and guilt and struggles to let go of him and quit enabling his lifestyle.

Mom needs to let go of her son and accept that he’s an empty shell of who he used to be. He’s beyond helping and is as good as dead. Slug uses “it” to further dehumanize him.

If meant literally, he died that night because his mom locked him outside on the front porch. He either died from exposure (realistic given that Slug is from Minneapolis) or from an overdose.

A basehead is a crack or cocaine addict. See Night Of The Living Baseheads.

He was a drug dealer for years and did enough business and made enough money to potentially attract the attention of the police, to his mom’s dismay. Eventually, he became and addict himself and his mom was relieved because being a user is far less likely to get him in as much as trouble as being a big time dealer.

Heems says that he used to take ESL classes.

Pergament is a defunct home improvement store, Genovese is a defunct pharmacy, Woolworth is a defunct discount variety store and The Wiz is a defunct electronics store. These were all active in the New York area when Heems was growing up but are now all out of business. He’s come a long way.

Presumably talking about NBA 2K2 (although he could easily be talking about NFL 2K2 or NHL 2K2, also by Sega Sports). However, the 2K2 games came out a couple of years after CRASH was dissolved in 2000.

A controversial special operations unit of the Los Angeles Police Department, tasked with combating gang-related crime from 1977 to 2000.

Carlton Banks of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is the embodiment of the pompous, uptight, privileged child of rich parents.

People who live on the internet and (possibly because they live on the internet) struggle with human interaction in reality are discouraged to find that they can’t manipulate things as easily IRL and can’t go back and make changes to what has already happened. Without the safety net of Ctrl+Z, shut-ins keep to their comfort zone on the internet.