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The first of these two lines sets the stage for the album: Redford is telling not only his own story, but also the story of what happened to blacks in America in the twentieth century, and of the social forces – which he readily admits he doesn’t fully understand – that led him to become the person he was and ultimately led to his (ahem) undoing.

The line about “destiny” plays into this idea, but the “pretend to be” section acknowledges how little control Redford ultimately had over his own life, though he tried hard until the end to act otherwise.

Possible allusion to W. E. B. Du Bois’s famous statement “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line” in his influential book The Soul of Black Folks.

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Redford acknowledges his post-death state here directly for the first time, saying that his own past actions are directly responsible for where he finds himself. Note also the pun on the idiom “add insult to injury”, except here the “injury” is a very literal, mortal one

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In this post-mortem state, Redford is even now unable to “admit defeat” – that is, give up fighting to figure out what his life meant. The “face in the glass” idea, as Toure points out, is meant to show his disconnection from himself, even before his death. His underworld activities caused him to get to a state where he can no longer reconcile who he actually is with his image of himself

Mirrors and reflections are a motif on this album, occurring again on “Lighthouse” and “I Remember”

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We learn that the main character of the record is dying very early on here, but we here intuit that, much like the narrators in the Geto Boys' famous paranoid fantasy song “Mind Playing Tricks On Me”, he is losing his grip on reality as well, perhaps as a reflection of the deceitful street life he had been living. Note also the evocative phrase “dead tired” – this whole album serves as a post-mortem for the Redford character, and even the opening scene of this song’s video shows him lying near-dead on the street. Additionally, it serves to show that even his dreams are dead.

The album bio reminds us of Redford’s immediate post-death mindstate:

[T]he album begins as the listener finds Redford disoriented–postmortem–and attempting to make sense of his former life

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There is a lot to unpack in this opening rhyme, and RG buddy Toure gets at most of it in his excellent analysis of this verse. A relevant excerpt:

The line can be read two ways—is it Thought saying “We’re about to tell the story of the capture of a criminal” or is it Redford saying someone stole his soul and he needs to catch that thief? I think it works both ways—the first line signals the capture of Redford, the second shows him wondering where it all went wrong and why

He doesn’t know who or why because he doesn’t know everything there is to know about the institutional systems and the street-world traps that dragged him down, that could drag any working-class brother down. But he knows that his failure in life isn’t completely his fault

Also notable are the three (extremely relevant) cultural references embedded here:

  1. To Catch a Thief, a 1955 Alfred Hitchcock movie about a notorious but now retired thief falsely accused of a new series of crimes

  2. “Who Stole the Soul”, Public Enemy’s 1990 jeremiad against the stealing of black culture

  3. “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep”, the famous 18th century children’s prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I shall die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take

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The “symphony”/“orchestrated” language continues the music wordplay here (as, more indirectly, does “incidental”, as in incidental music)

Redford’s criminal activity is, he says here, the root cause of everything that happens in the “symphony” of his life, yet it looks accidental and random to the outsider. In a larger sense, Thought-as-narrator may be referring to the larger illegalities that helped to create the situation Redford is now living in

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Yandy Smith is Jones' publicist. She was featured on VH1’s show Love & Hip-Hop 2

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Nutso was the character played by Matthew Guletz in the 1994 movie Above the Rim. He dies a dramatic death in the film

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This freestyle took place just in advance of the release of Slaughterhouse’s debut album

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Alfred Hitchcock was a famed film director who specialized in suspense and thriller movies, including the proto-slasher film Psycho, to whose violent “shower scene” Crooked is almost certainly referring

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