Half days are school days that get out at around noon, so you only have to attend a little bit of class. Similarly, all Drake requires from his girls are a little bit of class, beauty, and intelligence if they want to stick with him.

A little class is also a play on words, as classes are shortened during high school “half days”, when students are let out early.

A “backpack rapper” is like an “indie rocker” – anti-mainstream and sometimes viewed as snobby/elitist. Drake claims that he used to be a backpack rapper (debatable), and now people hate him because he’s making money and living the life.

Lucky Strike Lanes & Lounge is a popular bowling ally/nightclub in New York – it is also the first place Drake and Rihanna were ever spotted together.

Drake has expressed in interviews that he’s glad he didn’t allow himself to truly fall for her, because he got the feeling that the relationship didn’t mean as much to her as it did to him.

Big Boi lists the failures of his competitors in these lines, proving that they are not as calculating as he is:

• Buying an ounce worth of drugs is a much better value than buying $20 worth (“a dub”)
• Sometimes throwing a punch to prove your manhood isn’t always a good idea (especially if the guy you’re throwing punches at is bigger than you)
• No matter how badly you want to stay at the office to eat lunch, it is never a good idea to skip a lunch date with your girl

Few things going on here:

• Big Boi is comparing the literal lashes he puts on his competition with a three piece whip to the hardcore sex he has with his competition’s daughters
• “Taco” is also slang for vagina, which is located “south of the border” on a girl, just like the Mexican food chain Taco Bell
• “Yo quiero Taco Bell!” – Spanish for “I want Taco Bell” – was the company’s slogan when this song came out
• “hitting the border” can also refer to having sex with a girl then running away after

So the best way to translate this line would be to say that Big Boi has sex with his competition’s daughter that is just as passionate as the beat downs he puts on them, then never calls her again when he’s done.

Similar to how Common reveals he is talking about hip-hop in “I Used To Love H.E.R.”, but he puts his Shady twist on it, instead of talking about how he feels bad for what hip-hop has gone through, he hates it for what it’s done to him.

He also goes into why this song is entitled “25 to Life”. In criminal law, a “life sentence” means you serve 25 years, then get parole (unless you do something CRAZY in jail).

This is taken from the movie Almost Famous, where love interest Penny Lane predicted the main character would get famous. So throughout the movie, he keeps repeating this quote to her as he gets closer to fame.

“Penny Lane” could also be a reference to his former Degrassi co-star Stacey Farber, as Farber looks like the actress who plays Penny – Drake even put up an Instagram of he and Farber together, with a caption that read “Stacey Farber/Ellie Nash/Penny Lane”. So it’s possible that Farber is like his version of Penny Lane, someone that has believed he was going to make it big ever since the beginning.

A play on the old adage “money doesn’t grow on trees”. Drake is saying that he’s so rich that he pretty much does own a money tree, and he plans on planting more seeds so he can keep growing it.

A LinnDrum™ is an old-school drum machine. His cure for all illnesses is making a beat, and then shredding it with his rhymes.