These lines are parphrased from the song “New York, New York,” from the 1944 musical On the Town and the 1949 MGM musical film of the same name.

“New York, New York, a helluva town.
The Bronx is up but the Battery’s down.”

Geographically, the Bronx is north of Manhattan. Brooklyn is south and east of Manhattan.

Bets in horse racing can be made for the win, second place (“place”), or third place (“show”).

source: twinspires

Also this line should be seen as a detailed allusion to lyrics from The Band’s hit single “Up On Cripple Creek” which dropped way back in 1969.

Good luck had just stung me/To the race track I did go/She bet on one horse to win/And I bet on another to show/The odds were in my favor/I had ‘em five to one/When that nag to win came around the track/Sure enough we had won.

This is one of several examples on Paul’s Boutique where the delivered lyrics differ from the printed ones. The B-Boys change “another” to “your mother” – playing on the double-meaning of nag – a slang term for both a worn-out horse (especially a racehorse), and an annoying bother.

Eminem describes the process of declining in to inebriation. They say not to mix your drinks, but Eminem has now added 6 shots of Gin to his Hennessy and Bacardi Dark.

Here at RG we like to treat rap like poetry, so we get of pointing out how genius it would be if Em intentionally paused to put emphasis on “diction” – the literary term that describes someone’s pronunciation. But more than likely he is just hesitating to keep up his well crafted rhyme scream (mix Hen, kicks in, sixth gin, sick then)

With the spaceman/sky-team voice Em has changed his vantage point and is now describing the “42 car pile-up” that you caused from above as “a bunch of smoke flyin'.”

This is how high Eminem now is. He has driven on the wrong side of the road, caused a pileup, and now believes he is levitating above the wreckage observing it.

This also begins the darker part of the song. In truth, what has happened to Eminem is that he has been involved in the pile-up and has been fatally wounded. As we see in the following lines, he has cleverly used humour and wit to distract from the gruesome reality of the situation.

This became something of a signature line for Bus'. He also reprised it in the Scenario Remix. In 1998, he would voice an actual roaring dragon as Reptar Wagon in the animated Rugrats Movie.

It is possibly a reference to Dungeons and Dragons, a table-top RPG game originally published in 1974 and that became popular in the late 70’s and early 80’s, and is the beginning of modern role-playing games and the role-playing game industry,

The line is also referenced in the opening couplet of Redman’s 1994 single “Can’t Wait,”, and Nicki Minaj’s song “Roman’s Revenge” which uses this line as the chorus.