Lemar says that if the world was fair, he would be with this girl as a couple, instead of her being with another man and him singing this song.

He ascends from both this break up and a mediocre life, into the life of a celebrity.

Since, in the next line, he says

Cause this thing called time’s an illusion that we all trust………

One could question his sanity.

It’s also important to note that he’s supposedly just broken up with someone, so he isn’t at his peak in mental health.

He needs to bring his dream of becoming a famous musician to life.

Tying in with the line above, he’s living for opportunities and his dream, nothing else. Some might see that as selfish, but it’s just ambition.

You can wash your hands as much as you like, but if a murder you committed weighs on your conscience, you, like the kid’s mother, or the kid himself, may never fully recover from it.

Dot suggests that this murder will stay on a person’s conscience for the rest of their life.

A reference to Timothy 6:10, the infamous Bible verse that states

For the love of money is the root of all evil

This is the central topic of this song; the reality of money.

Here, Dot leaves us with a great rhetorical question to make you ask yourself this question.

Why do we work so hard for money, why not work harder for our dreams and human progression (in whatever field of work) instead?

Due to where they’re raised, some people are brought into a family that may have gang associations. Because of this, they buckle to the pressure of their family to be part of the gang, and will become so involved with this life without really understanding the root cause.

A prime example:

In this verse, Dot paints the picture of what the Hood (or “Bad Life”) really is like.

Dot details drug addiction, murder, teen pregnancy, crime and bad parenting and how this creates an endless cycle for the youth of these places and for generations to come.

People don’t really understand or know how bad living in poverty-stricken places is. People may be dubious because the people living the “bad life” still live in the UK, but when you actually look at the every day problems of life in some London boroughs, there’s an alarming number of problems (hunger, crime, drug addiction are just three of these which most people won’t see every day).

Here, Dot questions the whole image of “making it”. As said in the previous line, one would see a rapper on TV with so much material wealth and strive to be like that.

Dot says this is an illusion, because the material wealth doesn’t determine your happiness or success. Dot says that after making big money is his life, he was confused as to why money was his motive, because, the idea of money is so much more glamorous than when you actually have it.

What fame looks like:

What fame actually feels like: