The corner he’s referring to was being watched by the police cause it was so violent and people were holding and shooting guns. Those same people doing that on the corner were people that would kill for Lil Herb. So while they were violent and committing crime and his mother wanted him to stay away from that, they were still his brothers.

Speed Racer is a Japanese anime/manga franchise about automobile racing. It made it’s American television debut as a cartoon in the late 1960’s (wow this makes me feel old).

A confessional is a small, enclosed booth used for the Sacrament of Penance, often called confession, or Reconciliation. This is where usually Roman Catholics will confess their sins to God and ask for forgiveness. On the other side of the booth is usually the Priest and he listens to your confessions and gives you a task to complete depending on your sins which usually consists of saying certain prayers a certain number of times.

He’s referencing a “40” which is a 40 ounce bottle of malt liquor, which is generally low quality and very cheap for how much you get.

He’s getting very emotional while writing/recording this song about such an important world topic, but the main focus is that people don’t care. He’s seeing too many people putting up an invisible wall to stop themselves from caring about something as sad as what he’s talking about. He’s asking the listener if they are one of these people or if they care.

While recording this song, Crooked I is realizing this truth that he’s rapping about. It’s so real and saddening that it causes him to cry while he’s in the recording booth.

Her heart kept beating harder until she died from a combination of not having food or clean drinking water. According to this website dedicated to ending world hunger, almost 16,000 children die every day from hunger-related causes.

He’s now talking about this specific starving girl in a third world country who’s 5 years old. She’s starving and her heart is beating very hard and loud like some live drummers because she’s close to dying.

Instead of fighting hunger like Gandhi did with his hunger strikes to try changing the world for the better, he’s talking about fighting the hunger that a starving girl in a third world country fights every day. He creates the disturbing image of her stomach being so small that all it is is something that her spine hides behind. While it’s a disturbing image, people have to keep in mind that it’s an accurate image.

If you are telling yourself you can’t do anything to help them, Crooked I is saying you’re completely wrong. He says he will “count your blessings for ya” because clearly you haven’t to be able to honestly say there’s nothing you could give to this person who has nothing.