Nas is pointing to his duality, his interest in/ability to rap about both commercial themes (sex + violence) and “conscious” themes (Black Christ, the state of black America).

Three years earlier, Jay-Z had turned Nas' dual persona into a criticism on The Blueprint 2: “Is it Oochie Wally or is it One Mic? Is it Black Girl Lost or shorty owe you for ice?”

Mos chides those who pretend that the past is really past, and that the oppression of past times will not return. Some might suppose that post-Civil Rights Act America is “brand new”, that it represents a new day, but Mos sees echoes of past oppressions in current practices – for instance, the war on drugs is facially race-neutral, but its impact is highly concentrated in the black community, making it comparable in some ways to Jim Crow justice.

Again, Mos is drawing parallels between the pop music industry and deeper forms of social exploitation. Record labels are constantly selling us on “new” fads and trends that are really rehashes of older musical forms and (in the case of minstrel shows transforming into modern-day cooning for white consumption) stereotypes.

A vitamin “without a capsule” goes down more easily; it is also more pure, less adulterated. Nas is arguably advancing both ideas about his own style; it goes down more easily, meaning it is more accessible to the average listener, and it is more “raw,” thus closer to the streets than the rap of manufactured studio gangsters.

Nas also alludes to his stage name at the time, Nasty Nas, since chewing on a multi-vitamin produces a really nasty taste in your mouth.

A vitamin held without a capsule is just powder, which looks might look like cocaine or heroin, AKA dope. So his lyrics are dope…get it?

There are different ways to interpret what “parallel” does here, but the best explanation is that Nas is using parallel to mean “roughly analogous” – that is, he must “maintain” even though life on the streets of Queens is so trying and violent as to border on the demonic.

Still from Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

A good way to settle your Buddhist roommate’s “Is the glass half empty? Or half full?” ponderings is to throw the glass in his face.

Similarly, Wayne has no time for your philosophical ponderings; he’s going to “spill” you, meaning shoot you up, causing your innards to spill out on the floor.

Note what’s going on here – he references both Larry Bird and Larry Brown.

First he calls himself the “brown Larry Bird” – high praise since Bird is widely considered one of the greatest NBA players ever. Second, he calls himself “Brown, Larry” – the legendary basketball coach who won a world championship in 2004 with the Detroit Pistons. Third, he associates himself with Larry Bird in 1997-1998, who coached the Indiana Pacers to the conference finals, while comparing you to the 1996-1997 Celtics, who owned the league’s worst record that year (and went 36-46 the following season).

Tomorrow comes later because they’re waiting for pity. It takes so much time to arrive that the next day is delayed. Nice wordplay. Obviously a major concern in that first line is blacks waiting for others to help them, and failing to empower themselves.

“Beauty in the hideous” back, once again, to The Bluest Eye – a key theme of the novel is black standards of beauty that are set by the dominant (white) culture – Kweli probably finds it disturbing that blacks have not just their aesthetic but their moral and political standards determined by white-produced culture.