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An “ep” is short for episode—this was early ’90s slang for a quickie affair, famously heard in LL Cool J’s 1993 hit “Back Seat (Of My Jeep)”:

Back seat of my jeep, let’s swing an episode
Back seat of my jeep, let’s swing an ep'

Big’s trying to “creep” (another word for a secret affair) with one of these honeys, and here he’s convincing her to keep it on the low. They both “got hot"—gave into momentary lust—so the blame is shared.

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Not the first rap mention of football star Michael Vick’s dogfighting escapades. In his verse on the “I Get Money” remix, Jay-Z says:

I’m killing the block with old-school whips
So I’m killing the roof (ruff) like Michael Vick

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Young Money artist T-Streets (also mentioned in “I’m Blooded”)

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Wayne is colder than the common cold (from diamonds and ice)

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Wayne’s thugs “pop off” (shoot) their guns as frequently as krumping dancers engage in the move called popping – that is, all the time

A Krumper in the act of popping:

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Frank Minyard is, in fact, the coroner of New Orleans

This is also playing on the word “wake"m the ceremony for a deceased

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Rather than giving you cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which involves pumping on your chest to get your heart started, Wayne is putting a shotgun (“pump”) to your chest

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Nimrod – Noah’s great-grandson in the Bible – was a great king, credited by the Yahwist with the creation of the Tower of Babel and generalized “rebellion against G-d”

Building a huge tower is a crazy thing to do, so to “go Nimrod” is to go crazy (the Tower is credited with fracturing human language, which gives added rap meaning)

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Girls would wear Sasson Jeans in the late ‘70s, at which point Dre looked like this (red suit):

Dre says “Sassoons” instead of “Sassons” to invoke Vidal Sassoon haircare, and also because, well, the original French pronunciation doesn’t sound as cool as the way that most Californians pronounce it.

Here’s a super-white TV commercial showing that the official pronunciation is Sasson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYfxzkmCGpI

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A pun on the Gettysburg Address; rather than “4 score and 7 years ago” meaning 87 years, Jay is talking about when he started rapping, which would be 4 number one albums (Blueprint, Vol. 1, 2, and 3) and 7 years before this song.

Furthermore, 7 years before spitting this, his debut album Reasonable Doubt received 4 mics (out of 5) in Source magazine

Source later amended it to a 5 (Jay remarks on “44 4s)

Debut 4 mics, should’ve got a 5

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