The would-be-bogarter’s mother will sing this song when she’s mourning her son’s death.

“It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” is a classic ballad originally recorded by G.C. Cameron of The Whispers for the 1975 film Cooley High. Boyz II Men later covered the song and released it as a single from their 1991 debut album Cooleyhighharmony, turning the song into a hit as it peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Hot R&B Singles chart.

The sampled line comes from Kid Hood’s opening verse on A Tribe Called Quest’s 1992 “Scenario Remix” The full line—"I’m a bad, bad man"—was the last line of his verse — and ultimately the last line of his career, as he was killed days after laying his debut verse.

Each successive ‘bad’ was stretched out further than the last by Mister Cee (this song’s DJ), making it sound like “bad, baad, baaaad” or possibly “bad, baad, boy” – (Biggie’s record label is called Bad Boy Entertainment)

In a Ready To Die retrospective published by XXL, DJ Mister Cee explained the technique he used to stretch the “bad” sample:

I clearly remember […] I did the scratches on it […] and how I did the turntables and made the word “Bad, bad, bad” from turning the knob off on the turntable from pressing the stop button. Each time that I brought the record back, it’s a different effect to where you turn the knob off on the turntable to where you stop the turntable. You get a different effect on the record. So when you bring it regularly it’s like, “Bad.” Turn the knob off, “Baaad"—slower. Press the button, "Baaaad"—slowest.

DOOM literalizes a metaphor – “putting himself in your shoes” means he’s trying to take your perspective on things, see things from your angle – but in this case he’s literally putting himself in your shoes, and running off with your woman.

In New York City “run that” means give it up, as in a robbery. “Run ya kicks” means give up your kicks, or sneakers. Doom is putting himself in your shoes by force.

It appears that he is a stingy businessman.

“Capiche” means “understand”. The correct spelling in Italian is capisce, from the verb capire (“to understand”). This particular form means “you understand” (formal), and of course it would be used in a question: Capisce? – “Do you understand?”

Also this directly contradicts him giving away dubs for free to his friends as mentioned in the first verse. This sort of contradiction keeps the listener guessing and is typical of DOOM.

Sharecropping is the practice of loaning farmland to someone and splitting the profits made off the product. Madlib makes the beat, gives it to Doom to rhyme over, and they split the profits of the album

The line has racial connotations as well – sharecroppers were predominantly black, and the arrangement was almost always exploitative, as black farmers would work the land and then give almost all the proceeds to absentee white landlords. The line is a possible shot at the music industry

This references the same thing as an earlier line, that the album was released to the internet without authorization before it was finished, and even before any details about the album were publicly released

He puts a positive spin on this, noting that it means fans (his hyper fan-base) were extremely eager to hear it just based on the artists involved

“Goony goo goo” is a reference to an Eddie Murphy joke off of Delirious: it’s a nonsense phrase one of the characters in Murphy’s story tells

New Zoo Revue was a children’s TV show but Gary Gnu was a character on another children’s TV show

Doom seems to love very obscure references and this one shows that he doesn’t always fact-check them since he is a bit off here.

“Loony cuckoo” could imply something about craziness when coupled with him mentioning Gary Gnu and the wrong show. Like, he is saying “as looney as the idea of this guy being on an entirely different show.” It makes sense when coming after the goony bit which is nonsensical.

Gary Gnu was the news reporter on the classic children’s show The Great Space Coaster.

‘Goony goo goo loony 'cuckoo’“, as in the
Cuckoo bird, which may well appear in a Zoo, and also as in ‘Cuckoo Crazy’ which is a slang term for crazy.