Nytol is a sleeping aid, with the lyric “Nytol will help you get your Z’s” being the slogan used for the product.

You can “sleep” on the Tribe all you want, and refuse to acknowledge them as legitimate rappers, but Phife is going to help you see the light.

Notice all the rapid-fire references to 36 Chambers songs: C.R.E.A.M., Protect Ya Neck, Bring Da Ruckus, and Method Man.

Before Tical even dropped, it was widely speculated that Meth’s solo project signified that Wu Tang was disbanding. He was very vocal in interviews etc that this was not the case. All of these allusions seem to be another reassurance that the supergroup would remain intact, and indeed they did.

1992’s Totally Krossed Out went 4 times platinum. You read that right.

Meth is really punning it up here by saying that – you crossed over then got crossed out. Your success marginalized your achievement. Sounds strange but it happens.

Jump! jump!!! – if you love money.

Humorously, this line was a bit prophetic, as Kris Kross themselves have crossed over and got crossed out.

Refers to the Biblical story of John the Baptist, beheaded at the command of Herod upon Salome’s request. (Mark 6:14-29)

The notion of the head upon a platter could symbolize the rejection which Prufrock confronts from the women he desires.

The first two lines of the poem are lyrical and set a romantic (or Romantic) atmosphere. The harsh imagery of the third line, “Like a patient…” marks a distinct break with romance – as did Eliot’s Modernist style in general. (The third line also disrupts the pattern of rhyme established by the first two lines, further breaking the spell.)

The word “then” implies a prior conversation or, as suggested, an ongoing conversation–perhaps one that has worn thin. The “you and I” has been variously interpreted as Prufrock and a companion, Prufrock and the reader, or as Prufrock and the side of Prufrock’s psyche with which he’s engaged in an endless debate.

Eliot himself is on the record as to whom the speaker is addressing (although we don’t have to take his claims as the gospel truth; like many writers, he was sneaky about self-interpreting). In a New York Times article on Eliot’s letters, Denis Donoghue reports:

Eliot told Kristian Smidt that the “you” is “merely some friend or companion, presumably of the male sex, whom the speaker is at that moment addressing, and that it has no emotional content whatever.” But in an interview in 1962 he said that Prufrock was a man of about forty and in part himself and that he was using the theory of the split personality.

Technically, the two interpretations Eliot offered aren’t mutually exclusive. People with dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) may be aware of their other personalities' identities and even interact with them, while suffering from the delusion that they are entirely separate people. But it’s unlikely that Eliot had in mind anything this clinically severe. His connection of Prufrock with himself suggests a “split personality” of a more Freudian or metaphorical kind: ego and superego, warring sides of the self, etc.

The first line recalls the opening of Milton’s “Lycidas” in its simple but luxuriant and relaxed lyricism. In many respects the two poems are comparable, as both mark the coming of age of the poets.

If we interpret this line in light of the epigraph from Dante’s Divine Comedy, the absent character (“you”) is Dante being led on his tour of hell. In Inferno, Augustan poet Virgil serves as Danté’s guide, showing an appreciation for the Roman, whilst acknowledging a conscious break from his old Italian style to, just as T.S. Eliot breaks from Georgian and Romantic poetry.

He is not procrastinatin'. He’s implying he can shoot'em whenver he wants. Also, the cadence really sounds like a play on a commercial jingle.

Also a reference to an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. Elmer is hunting Daffy and Bugs. Bugs ask Elmer if he wants to shoot him now (Bugs) or shoot him later. Daffy quickly tells him to shoot him now. Comedy insues.

Straight off the Coasters' 1959 #2 hit performance of “Charlie Brown”:

Fe-fe, fi-fi, fo-fo, fum
I smell smoke in the auditorium

Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown
He’s a clown, that Charlie Brown
He’s gonna get caught
Just you wait and see
(Why’s everybody always pickin' on me)

This song was written and composed by Jerome “Jerry” Leiber and composer Mike Stoller. Who are among the most influential American songwriters and record producers in post-WWII popular music. Word.

Reference to This Little Piggy, an English nursery rhyme first published in 1728:

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed at home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none.
And this little piggy went…
“Wee wee wee” all the way home…