After the success of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which was a more soulful effort compared to her time with The Fugees. Of course, the vultures known as music labels would soon swoop in and try to take advantage of her success, shown in this lawsuit.

In an interview with Essence, Hill would later state:

I had to deal with folks who weren’t happy about that. I was a young woman with an evolved mind who was not afraid of her beauty or her sexuality. For some people that’s uncomfortable. They didn’t understand how female and strong work together. Or young and wise. Or Black and divine.

Shots Fired

As said in the Intro:

I’m just tryna define longevity, don’t tell me about charting/How many people have charted and still couldn’t avoid being a lost memory?

Tinie Tempah’s Pass Out, was a UK #1 in a singles chart that included Rihanna and Jason Derulo. Although it was a chart success and portrayed as a big step for the UK scene, it completely lacked in substance.

Ghetts doesn’t need a song as big as Pass Out because his music speaks for itself.

To “set pace” means to set a standard, and is usually used in racing/sprinting. Ghetts uses this to say that he’s winning (saying he’s the best in the scene) and the others are just there to make up the numbers.

Of course, GH is sort of a pseudonym for his former monikers Ghetto and Ghetts, with J Clarke being his newest one (standing for Justin Clarke, his name). The difference in persona of these three monikers can be found on the pre-album track The Cypher.

Ghetts is talking about how even the most innocent woman can turn into a gold-digger if she becomes that desperate, with only green on her mind.

This is what happened to the girl he’s talking about, who’s given up her body for money and is now upset about the hand she’s been dealt. The phrase “ring any bells” means for her name to be recognizable or familiar, meaning that her reputation preceeds her with every man she meets and she’s sealed her own fate, but she blames the world for what she’s become.

In Revelations the signs of the apocalypse are listed, including the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the 7 Angels playing trumpets as well as the sea turning red, among many others.

Another is that the entire earth spoke one language and that the earth’s four corners were at war with each other. Nowadays, English is the most commonly used language and America, the current super power, is at war with a lot of the Middle East.

A sermon is usually a part of a Church service, where a Priest will use a parable from the Bible to teach a lesson to the congregation. The most famous being the Sermon on the Mount.

A lot of young people don’t take sermons or Religion very seriously until they’re about to die, so Ghetts asks the Preacher to pray for those who live in sin, especially those who come from where he comes from because it is likely that they’ll find death before they find God.

I’m from a Church background but I don’t go to church that often anymore, but I recently went to church and I was thinking like the preacher’s tryna reach us with the sermon like “pray, pray” but sometimes I think it might take a little more than that sometimes, you understand what I’m saying?

This was originally a children’s prayer in the 18th Century, asking the Lord to protect the sleeper whilst they are sleeping. People from Metallica to Kid Cudi to Aloe Blacc have used this prayer in their music, just to name a few.

Here, Ghetts is saying Psalm 23 from the King James Bible in it’s entirety.

This adds to the underlying theme of religion in the album and show that he’s found God, whilst also fitting the sound of this song perfectly. This Psalm has been referenced countless times by Hip-Hop artists, with J Cole, Kanye West and Ghetts being the most recent, not to mention Diddy at the beginning of You’re Nobody Til Somebody Kills You.

This is a double entendre. Frank continues the direct statements of stereotypes, using “hanging low” to elude that all black males have large packages.

Simultaneously, Frank uses this line to get to the concept of “home”. He is extremely fond of LA, he talks about it more in this tumblr post. To him, it’s more than just a really hot place; it’s his home, even if he was born in Long Beach and lived a lot of his life in New Orleans. This is mostly because of it’s impact on his music career (because that’s where he met Odd Future)

This is also the reference to “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, which states “swing low sweet chariot, coming forth to carry me home” – using the same the key terms defining figurative language in his statement.