In the golden age of hip-hop, it didn’t matter what clothes you wore, or how much jewelry you had.

Modern hip-hop obviously doesn’t embrace that ideal.

Slug could be referring to the ideology that nobody’s perfect, and in order to move on, you have to let (or do) bad things to get through the trouble.

As the main theme of the song is an alcoholic trying to drown out past memories through the bottle, sometimes you you need a vice just to deal with all the pains of living just to get through life.

According the PBS, about 44 million Americans are living without health insurance. This would make visiting the doctor very expensive for those people.

A possible poke at Jay-z for being behind the times of when Charles Jourdan’s were in style.

Surrounding your feet in Joanie Dega’s and Charles Jordan

It’s also notable that Louboutin sued Charles Jourdan over their use of the red bottom shoes, something Push would reference later in his career.

Tunnel vision is when you get so faded that it looks like you’re looking through a tunnel. The sides seems to black out.

It’s used here in a different sense, however. Krizzle’s tunnel vision gives him a sense of clarity. All of the other shit in his life has been put to the side of his vision, and now the only thing he sees are his rhymes.

In other words, his tunnel vision has put his eye on the prize.

Kumate (Kumite) is a form of karate training that involves sparring with a partner.

Kumate is seen in the 1988 Jean Claude Van Damme film Bloodsport.

The old Pac-man machines in arcades use to take a quarter per play. Pac-man was known for eating white balls around a maze while being chased by ghosts.

In poverty stricken areas many people resort to selling drugs to try to escape from the slums. They essentially chase the money, much like Pac-man.

Quarter ounces are a measure of weight for most drugs.

We claim to be trying to better ourselves, unconcerned with what society thinks we should be doing. Too often, that’s just an excuse to not change. Also, continuing the blinders illusion in the earlier lines.

Also, continuing the earlier work references what most people look in for life is some form of tangible success. Whether it be big houses, or nice cars, they’re all just things at the end of the day. Instead of living life for the love of living, people are more focused on the unimportant and superfluous luxuries of life, putting them in a rut. More people focus on living in excess than actually being happy.

The narrator has blinders on, if he loses his focus then he’s devoured by the chaos that surrounds him.

Continuing with the previous line, we all seem to fall into the same cycles of life. Live to work; work to live. So, if you love your work (for example, as Slug does) you can be happy by focusing your life on work.

Paying homage to a line from UGK’s song Diamonds and Wood off of Ridin' Dirty. Ugk was comprised of the former Pimp C and Bun B.