Lupe alludes to the Allstate Insurance slogan, “You’re in good hands,” to show that the personification of his hands being talked about used to be an adversary.

Continuing the references to hands, Lupe alludes to the classic hand sign for, “Call me,” which includes putting your thumb to your ear and your pinkie to your mouth.

Lupe and this personification of his hands used to be able to shake hands, talk to each other, and get along. However, they’ve now let small disagreements come between them. Lupe uses the term “fingers crossed” to continue the hand references and show that their relationship is now crossed.

Leon Spinks was a former professional boxer who rose to fame after beating Muhammad Ali. In this line, Lupe is using boxing as an analogy for fighting, in general. Lupe wanted peace, but his hands gave him violence instead.

This isn’t the first time Lupe has mentioned the famous boxer on one of his tracks, as he previously included him in a line on “Dumb it Down”:

Something really stinks, but I Sphinx like Leon
Or lion in the desert

Neuralink, headed by billionaire Elon Musk, is a company that develops implantable brain–machine interfaces. The main goal of the the technology is to help people with disabilities by making direct changes to the way their brain’s work. However, some people see the idea of using technology to reprogram a brain as a dangerous cliff that could lead to far more, taking humans too far from reality.

Lupe extrapolates on the idea that Neuralink could read your brain to steal, or pirate, all of your deepest fantasies. Moreover, he explains that this disconnect we are building from reality due to our reliance on technology is slowly causing us to see things different from what they really are—we are now seeing beautiful women as undesirable and associating sterile lives with sane lives.

This ‘mistaking maidens for manatees’ is also a reference to various sailors (one notably being Christopher Columbus) mistaking manatees for mermaids. Off the coast of the Dominican Republic in 1493, Columbus wrote in his journal they were “not half as beautiful as they are painted.” For sailors who were deprived of intimacy for months at a time, from a distance, the forms of manatees or dugongs might have been mistaken for mythical mermaids. In the verse, Lupe suggests the opposite of Columbus' circumstance is true today where actual ‘maidens’ are perceived as ugly, undesirable ‘manatees’. Both of these versions of this delusion are indicative of a disconnect from reality.

Many people feel that this aforementioned world is just the one we live now and that the advances are inescapable, but Lupe disagrees.

It’s worth noting Lupe has actually hung out with Elon Musk before:

It’s well know that gang violence has long been present in Chicago, with the city having the 10th highest murder rate per capita of any US city at the time of this song’s release.

First mentioning the more mainstream moniker of Crips and Bloods, Lupe name drops two smaller Chicago based street gangs–the Vice Lords and the Gangster Disciples.

The history of why various gangs fight amongst each other is a complex issue, but one undeniable catalyst was government segregation forcing different ethnic groups into different neighborhoods.

In an article by Heather Cherone of WTTW news, the history of this is explained in depth:

Chicago’s leaders – all of whom were White – were to see their “city in a garden” transformed into an economic powerhouse to rival New York City. The solution developed by Chicago’s burgeoning real-estate moguls – who formed the first organization in the nation to consolidate the power of property owners into a political force – was designed to benefit Chicago’s White residents at the expense of many Black Chicagoans.

As the map below shows, literal streets are the dividing line between different ethnicities in Lupe’s home city.