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Drugs, money and girls. A dream lifestyle, to be attained by selling copious amounts of street drugs.

Quaaludes are sedatives which cause euphoria and heightened sexual arousal – sort of like the 70’s version of Ecstasy. In keeping with the Scarface motif, they were used heavily by Tony’s wife Elvira in the film.

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Another reference to every rapper’s favourite gangster flick, Scarface.

Just as Tony Montana prepares to move up in the drug game, he sees a blimp floating by with “The World Is Yours” written on the side. This signals the beginning of Tony’s reign. Nas has similar plans of his own in this verse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAlTJ8gPJ3M

And let’s not forget his earlier tribute, “The World Is Yours”. Clearly this message (and Tony’s wholehearted embrace of it) resonated with Nas in a big way.

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From 2010’s In Search of Stoney Jackson. Beats by Madlib. Shout out to all the vegetarian vegan Whole Foods headwrap chicks.

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This excellent track was left off the Further Adventures of Lord Quas album because the hefty sample of “DC City” by Roy Ayers couldn’t be cleared in time.

It came out on a limited 7" single instead and eventually made it onto the compilation album Yessir Whatever.

The ending features a sample of Neil Diamond’s Pot Smoker’s Song.

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Chill Rob’s 1996 comeback single after several years out of the music biz (another victim of Industry Rule #4080). Unfortunately for Rob, Hip Hop had come a long way since 1989 and this track went largely unnoticed by an audience raised on Wu Tang, Mobb Deep, Biggie and Nas. And to be fair, this track isn’t fucking with any of those groups.

It’s not a bad showing though and if you dug Chill Rob back in the Ride The Rhythm days it’s definitely worth checking out.

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This is Wolfman Jack the DJ from the 60’s and 70’s, also remembered for his part in the film American Graffiti.

The Wolfman was so popular in his day that he recorded a few albums of his own, one under the name Wolfman Jack & the Wolf Pack dating from the mid-60’s.

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As well as the Wu Polo jackets, Smoke DZA likes the Rugby shirts – he’s got ‘em in all kinds of colours. And he rounds out his look with a pair of Adidas Rod Laver trainers.

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EPMD, also from Long Island, came out a year after Rakim with their debut single “It’s My Thing”. The flip side, “You’re A Customer”, contained the following line:

It’s like a Dig'em Smack
Smack me and I’ll smack you back

which was a harmless reference to a cereal commercial. But some thought it was a response to Rakim’s closing line in “I Ain’t No Joke”

You could get a smack for this
I ain’t no joke

This caused a stir on Long Island and Rakim fired back on “Follow the Leader”. The two crews eventually met and squashed the beef.

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Another Connecticut shout-out.

Stezo was a rapper from Pistol Wavin' New Haven. He started out as a dancer for EPMD before getting a deal and releasing his album Crazy Noise in 1989. The album featured uncredited production by his cousin Dooley O and Dooley’s beat-digging partner Chris “C” Lowe.

Peace Connecticut!.

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A play on the word cockroach which here refers to:

  1. The pest/insect, commonly believed to be robust enough to survive a nuclear war

  2. The insult used by Tony Montana in Scarface to describe people without honour

Count Bass is using the urban myth about the insect to say that he’s not a cockroach in the Scarface sense (the word cockroach is actually sampled from the film).

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