There’s a pretty cool oxymoron in this line.

There’s more to Royce than just beef. During this time, he was in the middle of a beef with D12. He’s laughing, which is why the album is so dark. Whenever someone is laughing when they should be angry or depressed, it makes people fucking uncomfortable.

He and Eminem would dedicate a whole song to this about seven years later. “Above the Law”

Hip-hop is notorious for its materialism. Royce dreams about cars and trucks like he dreams that he can’t fight. Also, note the parallelism when he says, “if I land, I won’t wake up” Normally, if you fall in a dream you wake up when you hit the ground. Royce is saying that if he falls and hits the ground, he won’t wake up; he’ll die. This alludes to the fact that he isn’t dreaming, and this is real life.

Royce will do anything to feed his family. He’ll even send you to the pearly gates, which is the gateway to this “kingdom”(heaven.)

Royce continues the theme set by the last verse. Very nice parallelism. It’s pretty well known that Royce was an alcoholic (he’s clean now). So he “blacks out” to old-school rap, and he’ll keep doing until there aren’t any lights on (black-out) (death).

Well played Royce, well played.

Reference to his song “Throwback”, also on this album.

The epicenter is where an earthquake originates. Royce is from Detroit. Also worth noting that he says it like “EP” which is basically a short album.

Royce will continue making music, “Regardless” (tee-hee) of bootleggers. His first album was HEAVILY bootlegged. They slow him down, but don’t stop him. His spot is still reserved as long as the bootleggers bump his shit.