Death comes to everyone eventually, but you can choose whether you die with regrets or not. So if you’ve got a decision to make, J Cole recommends taking the path that you’re gonna look back on when you’re old and dying and be happy about.

Crunch time is the ending to a game, mainly basketball, and that is when you have to really play hard so you can win. Shit got real.

In this song J Cole is using basketball’s ‘crunch time’ as a metaphor for turning points in peoples lives. The person he’s talking about in the first verse chose hustlin and dealing drugs instead of going to college, and has ended up broke and single. In the next verse he’s talking about another end of the spectrum – a guy who’s working a real job and supposedly contributing to society, only to come home to a nagging wife. All in the meanwhile, he’s trying to pursue his dream of becoming a big-name rapper.

The gun is loaded because some people in some hoods are dangerous and might want to see Dre and Snoop dead. Compton, Long Beach, Inglewood and South Central, and all of it districts of Los Angeles are those hoods, as well as the place where Snoop and Dre are from.

Astro uses a homonym here to convey two different meanings:

• The rap game is so monotonous and boring, or tired, that the kid, Astro, has been taking a quick cat-nap to get away from it all. In Mexico this is known as a siesta, where you take a short nap in the afternoon after lunch.

• The rap game is so boring that Astro decided to do like some of the more violent members of the country to his South, and kidnap it (a fairly commonplace occurance in Mexico.) The game is all his now, he can hold it for ransom and make bank, or he can just go ahead and murder it.

Yelawolf had a rough childhood involving relations with his ‘rockstar’ single mother and absentee father.

He explains his situation in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrdi5koS4mQ

A whole bunch of Pusha’s niggas have pulled the trigger and killed people before, and most of them never got caught or even had to defend themselves in court. OJ wasn’t the only person to “get away with murder”—in fact, it’s pretty common in the ‘hood.

Many people felt OJ got away because he was a celebrity and at the time had the money and resources to hire a legal “dream team” that helped him get acquitted. Hustlers in the street with enough money and clout could get the same treatment in the justice system with the proper payoffs.

Chance has consumed several Roxies. He’s so high that he’d have sex with a popped (Chicago slang for unattractive or ugly) woman who’s wearing blue heels. Chance could also be talking about Viagra, a blue pill known to enhance one’s sexual performance.

Earlier in the album, Chance referenced red and blue pills on “Pusha Man”:

Now it’s just a red pill
Got a blue and a hand full of Advils

Additionally, this serves as a Matrix reference; the blue pill lets you escape reality.

The A$AP mob gets some special privileges at all the biggest bars and clubs. They can show up after closing time and have the whole place to themselves just to chill.