• Lupe juxtaposes the external conflict in Sierra Leone and other places that the diamonds fund, alongside the internal conflict that the acquisition of conflict diamonds produces in people that are aware of the problem

• Lupe is posing the question “Do the conflicts in Africa have any involvement with our War on Terror?” How much would it cost us to go in and stop all this violence? How would the global community react to us doing this? How long would it take? How many American lives would be lost? How much effort would it take and the effect on the economy?

Around the time this song was originally released, Hurricane Katrina had just occurred, having a disastrous affect on Louisiana and all of the United States. Federal response and aid to the hurricane victims was notoriously lax, and George W. Bush, president at the time, was seen as responsible for this. The majority of the population that was directly devestated by Katrina were African American, leading many, including Kanye West to think that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people”

However, Lupe is basically saying, “Yo — forget Bush! There’s worse shit goin' on that’s destroyin' our peoples! And that worse shit is being done by black people.”

Diamonds have been fought over for a much longer time period than drugs. Thus, the diamond trade is the “older brother” of the drug trade.

This coincidentally mirrors a similar line from Kanye West’s own remix to “Diamonds from Sierra Leone”:

Over here—it's the drug trade, we die from drugs
Over there—they die from what we buy from drugs!

A likely reference to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana:

Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us

Kanye speaks here about his moral struggle: doing Dirt is a metaphor for doing illegal or bad things. Kanye then goes to church to ask forgiveness – clean his hands of the dirt. Getting baptized is the most extreme version of ‘cleansing yourself’ from sin. Being baptized 3 or 4 times is very unusual, so he keeps trying to escape the wrong things he’s done in his past.

Kanye explores similar religious sentiments in his classic song “Jesus Walks”, which directly precedes this song on the album.

Kanye is also making a reference to Matthew 27:24 when Pilate washed his hands from guilt. He is pretty much saying that he does that all the time.

More alliteration here with “done did dirt”

They tried to censor the person who makes a positive intellectual influence upon hip hop and rap by not wanting to make it mainstream.

Seeing this makes him sicker in two ways: sick to his stomach to see the censorship, and his raps become more and more sick.