Nas has gotten wiser with age; he used to spend money for immediate pleasures like getting drunk, now he thinks it best to plan for the future.

Instead of wasting money, he realizes every dollar could be saved or invested. Although participating in the lottery doesn’t seem like a sign of maturity, Nas is simply using this image as a metaphor for his growth. It all connects to the theme established at the beginning of this verse–the reverence for being alive.

Green cards are identification cards that immigrants get when they officially become permanent US residents

He didn’t only mean literal out of country foreigners, but people from outside of his set/crew that were encroaching on his block/territory, Thus ripping their green card would not allow them re-entry to his turf.

As AZ discussed earlier, it’s somewhat of an accomplishment to make it to 20 in the hood

This line portrays Nas' objective view on religion, He accepts the concept of a higher power, but makes it clear he doesn’t know exactly what that is.

Nas often compares himself to God and/or Jesus, like in “Smoking”:

Magazines say I walked on water
Talked to the heavens
Spit at judges, stepped on peasants

The average lifespan of a man in the West is 79 years, hence 20 is about a quarter way through.

Twenty is when your age no longer ends in “teen”, but more importantly it is usually around the time when males are completing the final stages of puberty

Nas is writing in the present tense; he was in fact around 20 years old during the recording of Illmatic and could have written this song on his 20th birthday. It is an accomplishment to have escaped his teens because really he could have been killed any day in the mean streets of the Queensbridge projects. This line illustrates how precious life is.

His friends from the ghetto are either RIPing (dead) or in San Quentin prison

• Note how some are “Resting” and some are “Sitting”; in both scenarios they are unable to be on their grind. They are essentially out of the game.

The Nation of Gods and Earths aka the “5 Percent Nation” is a popular belief system amongst blacks in its native NYC, and has in particular had a hugely outsized influence on hip hop .

AZ himself is a 5%‘er, so the conflict between staying righteous and true to the group’s principles and living the street life must strike him particularly hard.

One of the trademarks of the NGE is their “breaking down” of words, and AZ’s rap moniker is a great example. According to author Ted Swedenburg’s exhaustive article on the group’s influence:

The name of rapper AZ, short for Asiatic, which broken down is Age and Attic, broken down again is age = body and attic = mind

As for Nas, he has a long-standing interest in the NGE, but does not consider himself a member. See this 2007 interview:

Nas: When I was about ten years old I got some lessons (in NGE doctrine), so it right there just opened me up. I just been intrigued by the Five Percent Nation, Islam since I was a kid then I started to see the difference between what the Nation of Islam and Islam as a whole was, so I seen the difference. And I just choose my own way

These lines, the opening to one of the greatest cameos in rap history, are made all the more interesting by the fact that AZ uses the British “orientated” instead of the States' corruption “oriented” (a usage, to be fair, he may have borrowed from Rakim). Take issue if you like, but the British were the creators of the English language, the language AZ is using, and he is using it very well.

Double Entendre.

• Life can only be real to a person if they actualize it, that is if they fully emerse themselves in the experience of living .
• He is beginning to see the realism of life as in how life is and that we all will die.

Since this society as he says driven by status, which you get from money – AZ’s mind is also money based even though he dislikes it. A product of his environment.

It is also a nod/reference to his alias “The Visualiza”

Nas and AZ discuss how to allocate the money they’ve made; they keep the $50s (President Ulysses S. Grant is on the bill) to add to their bankroll, they spend the $20s (President Andrew Jackson) on clothes and other stuff and the $1s (President George Washington) go towards their partners (be they actual wives, or booty calls, or whatever else).

This line was also used in “The Genesis” and paid homage to in Jay-Z’s “Dead Presidents III”.