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What is this?
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Eric B is from Elmhurst, Queens but traveled all over NYC as a DJ for radio station WBLS. At a gig out in Wyandanch, Long Island, he met a promoter who introduced him to Rakim. This was the beginning of the legendary Eric B. & Rakim.
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Refers to Amadou Diallo who was killed by police earlier that year (1999) in The Bronx (Uptown New York). Four plain-clothes officers unloaded 41 shots on the unarmed Diallo after mistaking the wallet he was holding for a gun.
The officers were acquitted of all charges.
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Phillies Blunts are cheap corner store cigars that are usually hollowed out and filled with weed. They’re name-checked in countless Hip Hop songs of the 90s (along with rival brands Dutch Masters and White Owls).
Thanks to rappers constantly shouting them out, Phillies Blunts are known around the world. They’ve influenced a pair of Adidas shoes and a UK record label.
Go harrrrrrd! BET (Ft. Black Thought, Eminem & Yasiin Bey) – 2009 BET Hip Hop Awards - Cypher 3
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Trying to lay my God Body cats all on they back Capone-N-Noreaga (Ft. Mobb Deep & Tragedy Khadafi) – L.A., L.A.
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Hispanic inmates down with the Latin Kings are at war with Black inmates in the Five Percent Nation.
Weapons are improvised from whatever’s available – in this case ice picks. Ghost told us back on “Verbal Intercourse” that these are freely available in the kitchens. Sounds like an accident waiting to happen…
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Will ride the dick like a horse with the cowboy brand Mobb Deep (Ft. Big Noyd & Nas) – Give It Up Fast
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Women are more than willing to exchange sex for drugs.
In the film New Jack City, Gee Money (right, below) makes the same point to his partner Nino Brown (left) while enthusing about the popularity of crack cocaine.
And the bitches… Oh, Lord! Them bitches, they do anything for this, man! I had my jimmy waxed every day last week. You understand? Several times a day.
– Gee Money
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Bumbo is a Jamaican cuss word meaning backside. Cappa’s gun is aimed at your ass (probably not literally – that would be weird). The “rasta” at the end of the line completes the JA reference.
Could also be a sly reference to the dancehall tune “Bumbo Red”.
Great annotation – I just wanted to add (not for IQ, I obviously don’t care about that, love the system, just don’t pay attention to mine) …wanted to add that indeed people (and I’ve heard this more in urban settings than elsewhere, by far) DO often intentionally shoot someone “in the ass”, and this is literal. I’m not saying Rae definitely meant this, who knows. The idea is usually twofold, involves both the charges one used to stand a chance of getting, but more than that legal mess it would take a minute to explain, to simply “put a N**ga in a wheelchair”, I used to hear that said often, I would think the real life would end up in music, and possibly does here. This is just some “trivia” to add to the great annotation above – and as you can imagine, being shot in a place that often will land one in a wheelchair is (or was, idk how it “it is” now) worse than being killed, so…you get that aspect. Often this wasn’t the buttocks persay, but the hips, etc, some shot that will likely land a guy in a chair, which had a sort of legal bonus depending on where one was, what law enforcement/etc they were dealing with, how the shooting would be seen if discoverd and proven, the general idea being it was not a shot intended to kill. So…you got to give someone something “worse than death” (obviously it’s not…but that depends largely on perspective) AND not risk the same charge being heavily pushed at you were you to have “gone for a headshot”, to put it in some FPS terms. That stuff is going to vary in every way, slang, the law, etc., from place to place and “era” to era. I can only say I heard it more than enough, this would have been in the states, in the late 90’s.