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Lovers rock is a style of reggae that was popular in the 70s and 80s. In contrast to the consciousness of roots reggae and the aggression of dancehall, lovers rock has a slower, more melodic sound and romantic lyrics. Perfect for a bit of bump and grind in the club.

Gregory Isaacs' “If I Don’t Have You”, mentioned later in this verse, is a good example of the style.

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

Coincidentally, Sade (also mentioned later) released an album called Lovers Rock the following year.

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Ali Shaheed Mohammed and Phife are Q-Tip’s band mates.

Extra P is the alias of Large Professor – emcee, producer and Tip’s beat digging buddy. He produced and featured on the song “Keep It Rollin'” from this album.

Extra P, Shaheed, Phife and the Abstract.

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A shout-out to fellow Queens native LL Cool J and his song “Back Seat” which has the chorus:

Back seat of my jeep, let’s swing an episode
Back seat of my jeep, let’s swing an ep

On his first solo album Q-Tip dedicated a whole song to his vehicular sexcapades – the cheekily titled “Let’s Ride”.

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BBD is the R&B group Bell Biv Devoe – they released a single in 1993 called “Above The Rim”. They’re also name-checked by Phife in the song “Butter”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQKmV2cFPB8

The terms above the rim and ball have both basketball and sexual connotations. Phife is a big fan of both activities.

Note: The basketball-themed film Above The Rim, came out after this song. There was a popular streetball brand with the name around that time though.

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The Zulu Nation is a Hip-Hop awareness group started by Afrika Bambaataa in the 70s. 2013 was its 40th Anniversary.

Tribe always represented the Nation hard. In fact you can trace their lineage right back to Bambaataa via the Jungle Brothers and DJ Red Alert.

Side Note: Q-Tip has had an album titled The Last Zulu in the works since 2010.

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Yes, Kanye actually had diamond dentures implanted on his lower set of teeth. As he said on The Ellen Show:

It’s just certain stuff that rock stars are supposed to do, you know?

To be fair, he already had fake teeth in his mouth. The real ones were knocked out in the car accident he speaks about in “Through The Wire”. If your teeth are fake they might as well be made of diamonds… right?

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He’s about to get high and eat a lot of Big Macs. Big Mac Attack was a MacDonald’s advertising slogan in the 80s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lstIQa8aZg

Some notes on the slang:

An ‘L’ is short for either El Producto cigars (El Producto Blunts were the first cigars to be used for rolling weed, hence the name) or L-skin, a joint rolled with two regular cigarette papers stuck together in a capital L shape. The slang mostly depends on where you come from. Heems doesn’t specify but he seems like a joint guy to me.

Finna is a contraction of ‘fixing to’, in the same way that gonna is a contraction of ‘going to’. They both mean the same thing.

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Puffy’s Bad Boy Records was at its peak when this song was released with The Notorious B.I.G., Craig Mack, and assorted R&B singers.

Side Note: Before Diddy came on the scene, there was another Bad Boy Records, a short-lived indie out of Brooklyn. Their 1988 release Court’s In Session by Kaos is a forgotten classic.

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GZA is not a fan of A&R people, perhaps as a result of being forced to include an R&B song on his debut album. He also disses A&Rs at the end of “Protect Ya Neck”.

Atlantic, of course, is another record label.

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Uptown Records was where Puff (and Biggie) started out. When Puffy was sacked he created Bad Boy, taking Big with him.

Uptown was distributed by MCA Records and often referred to as Uptown/MCA which is why GZA puts the two labels together here.

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