Double-meanings to the word “draw”: An artist might draw a picture, Royce’s girl is drawing a nice bath for him – treating her dude luxuriously

Royce is like Rocky Balboa – the scrappy underdog who refuses to go down. DJ Premier is like Mickey – his experienced no bullshit trainer who’s helping him compete with the big dogs.

A “drum” is a type of cylindrical ammunition magazine often used in heavy weapons like machine guns (“chopper” is slang for an AK-47).

Travis Barker is a well-known drummer from the band Blink-182. Royce is best known for machine-gunning people up.

Royce did some ghost-writing work on Dr. Dre’s Chronic 2001 and was even supposed to appear on a song on the album. Royce’s manager Kino is rumored to have leaked the fact that Royce was ghost-writing for Dre to the media. Dr. Dre asked Royce to drop Kino as his manager, which Royce refused to do due to the two’s long-standing relationship. Because of this Dre cut Royce off.

Royce and long-term friend Eminem also had a major falling out. He uses the majority of his verse on the Slaughterhouse track “Move On” to address this.

Royce also went from the cusp of major-label stardom to being back in the ‘hood doing dirt and grinding for independent label Koch, now called E1 Music

Royce has developed through true life experiences and taken something from every failure and mis-step along the way. In the wise words of MC Guru:

Experience, the best teacher

A wink-and-nod reference to a line from 2Pac’s “Straight Ballin'”:

And they say: “How do you survive weighing 165
In a city where the skinny niggas die?”

Where Royce is from you have to be strong to survive, but even if you’re not strong physically, if you’re ruthless enough and quick with that steel you can keep yourself alive.