The numbers sung resemble percentages, with them all summing up to 100. The percentages 70, 60 and 50 are the love in the relationship Teddy gives to the woman. While the woman first gives less than Teddy she ends up giving the same amount of love; which is the “And somebody loves you back” concept of the song.

This concept also comes back at the end of the song:

I’ve given 80 percent and she’s given 20 percent
Now she’s givin' 70 percent and I’m givin' 30

I think we’ve got something that a lot of people don’t seem to have
Talkin' ‘bout a 50-50 love, yeah

In Egyptian mythology there was battle between the brothers Set and Osiris, which ended in Osiris' death. Before that, he had a child with his better half Isis, which was Horus. Horus was told to defend Egypt after Osiris passed away, and did so, ending up in numerous battles with Set.

Set is depicted as trying to prove his dominance by seducing Horus and then having intercourse with him. However, Horus places his hand between his thighs and catches Set’s semen, then subsequently throws it in the river, so that he may not be said to have been inseminated by Set. While Horus did this, Set is said to have poked out Horus' eye (which contains his iris: the colored tissue around the black pupil)

5996 A.L. (Anno Lucis or Year of Light) is a dating system used by Freemasons originating from the Bible. “And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light”, meaning that A.L. is used to refer to a year in which something was created. When converted to A.D. (Anno Domini or In the year of the Lord) the year would be 1996 A.D. , which is the year Soul on Ice and this song dropped.

For Ras Kass, the beginning was his birth, the moment he came to this world. He makes a reference to a Charles Dickens novel here, David Copperfield to be exact, in which the very first chapter (excluding the preface) is entitled “I Am Born”; which is the same way Ras Kass' life began.

In a Complex interview DJ Muggs ended up explaining that B-Real didn’t write about half of the lyrics to “Hand on the Pump” himself, ant that that was all Brett’s work:

I was doing the “Hand on the Pump” beat, and Brett from 7A3 was like, ‘Yo, that’s ill. I got an idea. I’m gonna write this little thing for B-Real and see if he likes it.’ So I’m like, ‘Whatever.’

So he wrote this shit, and B-Real came through, and we recorded it on the 4-track. Brett wrote the first verse, the hook, and the beginning of the second verse. B-Real wrote the rest of the second verse and the third verse

In the aforementioned interview DJ Muggs also took the time to discus Sen Dog’s short appearance on the song:

Then, Sen [Dog] had created this voice that we called the psycho-beta voice. It was kind of like Chuck D a little bit. Deep voice, baritone. And we flew that in, and I swear to God, we had a little 4-track demo driving around with that song, and it was like, yo, you felt the energy of the song.

In an interview with Complex, DJ Muggs revealed how the hook to “How I Could Just Kill a Man” came to be:

Originally, it was to a different beat, and it was called “Trigger Happy Nigga.” Back in the days, we would always do the songs at my house on a cassette 4-track. So we did it, and B-Real rapped the song, and one line in the song said, ‘Here is something you can’t understand/How I could just kill a man.’ But I didn’t pay too much [attention] to it.

Time went on, and I made the ‘Kill a Man’ beat. And when I made that beat, he came to the house, and kicked the same “Trigger Happy Nigga” rhyme, and I heard [the line], ‘Here is something you can’t understand/How I could just kill a man,’ and then he went right into the second verse. And I was like, ‘Hold up. That’s the hook right there.’ So we made that the hook.

Sleeping here is a synonym for someone dying or getting killed, since, you know, “never sleep, ‘cause sleep is the cousin of death”.

With “the stars or the bars” Coop is alluding to the question whether one will end up in heaven or hell. The stars are up in the sky, just like heaven is supposed to be. While the bars refers to being locked up for committing a crime; a sin, meaning that one would end up in hell.