His fault as a rapper isn’t the fact that he has too much room for improvement; its the fact that the general audience will not buy into the things Tone releases.

The same people who, to your face, are all on board with you and want to work with you are the people who hope your record doesn’t sell well behind your back. For the same reason as everything else in this song; money.

When you’re on your own, you’re really on your own; nobody will help you in doing your thing, as it will bring monetary consequences to those helping. So, you have to do it yourself.

When you finally make it big, all of a sudden everyone wants to jump on, trying to help or take part in your actions; solely because it will bring monetary benefits being in association with you.

You give them the money that they’re looking for, and they’ll let you do your thing.
Major labels are luring you with being able to fulfill your dreams of becoming a rapper, but when you’re signed, they fuck you over and suddenly they are the ones deciding what your music should sound like.

The double-standard described previously in the song is seen everywhere; in the radio, on television, et cetera.

Elitist DJ’s will, according to Tonedeff, use that excuse to avoid playing his music. He doesn’t have a vinyl copy of the music.

However, when given a Nas MP3, they’ll use it anyways and play it over and over.

He tries and tries over and over again, but he keeps being shunned because Tonedeff’s music is not what the common listener will buy into; therefore, not much monetary profit will be made by sponsoring him. The “biased record pools” only chart things that will get them the most money, even if it means not getting true lyrical ability into the light.

Rappers all make their money by how much their music gets played. The money isn’t directly correlated with their abilities as artists, it is only directly related to their plays on the radio or other means.

The way Tonedeff sees it, a rapper’s ability should be directly related to their plays on the radio. And since plays are directly correlated to the money they make, by the transitive property, lyrical ability should be directly correlated to the amount of money a rapper has. But that’s not the way it is, and he realizes this.

He’s telling the listener that, just because he doesn’t make nearly as much money off of his records in comparison to today’s famous artists, doesn’t mean that the listener should just discredit him and wave him off without bothering to listen to him.

Popular rappers often like to dickride other, more famous, rappers, to the point where they can’t voice out their real opinions without contradicting things they’ve said because of this dick-riding.

Also, wordplay:

comin' | cummin'