Me and my cousin were super close, so when he got killed again, I struggled, and still.

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That whole part of the song are all things that impacted my life in very heavy ways, like changed who I would become. I feel like mom and me are really close, but just watching her struggle was a thing that then made me struggle.

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Death is just something that you can’t avoid, and I think the element of death haunts the writing of the song. It haunts the sound of the song. It kinda just is in the background the whole time, so I don’t think death ever really goes away, you know?

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Viewing God as a woman, it just seems so outlandish to me that a man would die for me, but thinking of all the relationships that I had with women, it seems way more likely that one of them would do that. And maybe that’s terrible to say. I don’t know if that’s terrible or if that’s great, but it just seems like, in terms of how I’ve been loved by people in the past, this just seems more likely. More of a reality for myself at least, and that’s not even just as a partner kind of way, but even the women in my actual life, you know, grandma, mom. This is the kind of relationship we have where I feel that way about them.

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“Barcode on my wrist” came from when I was 13, maybe, my cousin came to my house once and was just super high, and he was talking to me about something he had seen on TV where he was like, “One day they gonna put a chip in everybody arm.” Literally like they’re gonna put a barcode on everybody. And it was funny at the time, and as I grew older I’m like, “Maybe that wasn’t that crazy.” You know? Maybe that’s not that outlandish. I mean, they damn near have a barcode on everybody just by having a phone, you know? It’s a feeling that you have sometimes growing up in whatever situation that you grow up where it just feels like you aren’t a part of someone else’s utopia. I think that’s what that line really represented for me. Like by being black, you are an abomination to someone else’s utopia, and you don’t fit the description of what the perfect world is to some people.

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It kinda didn’t hit me that ‘Pac was 25 until I was 23, and then I’m like, “Holy shit. That’s hella young.” As a kid, 25 seems like such a full life, and then you turn 23 and you’re like, “That’s damn near next year.” You know? So just knowing that, and then always hearing that Jesus was 33 when he was killed, it just made the timeline of life seem shorter and shorter. And I think that’s a theme throughout the song, and throughout the album even, just trying to do as much as possible in as little amount of time. And that’s one thing that I think every rapper saw in Tupac.

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When you poor and they wanna keep you poor? yeah, you feel me

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shout out gang nem

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there are some very unfortunate events taking place in Chicago, but I’d rather let you google this one

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