break the street laws

Your mind is like a radio: if it is not properly tuned, it will receive nothing but garbage.

By 1995 KRS was already ten years deep in the rap game.

My words are powerful enough to penetrate even the toughest fabrics.

There’s no mic on the streets either—if you want your voice to be heard you have to warp the very air around you.

Echoing the common sentiment that Hiphop is a code for communicating with our people, one that the Man has not yet cracked.

EQ, short for equalizer, is a tool in audio production that allows the producer to adjust hi, mid and treble levels on a piece of sound. KRS says that the street has no EQ, i.e. no mechanism for finessing or sweetening the message. The message must stand or fall on its own merits.

I drop knowledge into your brain

A cypher is a circle, and also represents the letter O in the Divine Alphabets. MCs build their skills in circles of rhymers, but in a larger sense Hiphop builds community in a “circle”—nobody above anyone else, all equal.

The government, on the other hand, wants a society where the people at the top have everything and the underlings get nothing. Like a pyramid scheme.

Pick up cotton, i.e. buy fancy clothes. Black people might think that the struggle’s over, but they’re still slaves to this capitalist system.