Lupe plays on the homonym of “Turn though/ tourneau” to create a double entendre. Tourneau is a high end jewelry store that sells fancy watches. Moreover, he’s also telling Atlantic to, “watch him” break away from their grasp.

Jay feels he is the rap equivalent of NBA center Dikembe Mutumbo.

At the time of this songs release, Dikembe was the reigning defensive player of the year and is one of the all time leaders in blocks.

Jamie Foxx played football player Willie Beamen in the film Any Given Sunday and Willie vomits in a huddle.

Willie Beamin often performed in the shotgun play, but instead often disregarded the playbook to run, a la Michael Vick, instead of look for his teammates. This is why Jay says “gunplay’s optional”. The option is also a play where the quarterback can choose to run the ball.

Nas “survived” a rap beef with Jay-Z, which most critics say he won and a so-called rap beef with The Notorious B.I.G, along with a feud with 2Pac. These three rappers, along with Nas, are considered by many four of the top five MCs of all time.

Total Requests Live, or TRL, was a “top 10 video countdown” program on MTV hosted by Carson Daly. It was one of the first interactive countdown shows in music television, using the internet as a tool for viewers to vote and comment on videos.

Eminem was actually one of the most popular artists on TRL, thousands of adoring fans would be outside the studios to get a glimpse of him from the window.

Eminem has referenced TRL before on “White America”

I go to TRL, look how many hugs I get.

Paraphrased by Jay-Z in “So Ghetto”:

Thug nigga til the end tell a friend bitch
won’t change for no paper plus I been rich

A year later, in 1988, the “microphone friend” phrase was later extended by Rakim to an entire song – “Microphone friend.”

Diddy is the self-proclaimed “inventor of the remix”. He even put out an album in 2002 called We Invented The Remix

He admits here that it’s basically a cheap ploy to put out two singles without really making two hit songs

“9 to 5” is a common phrase in America, referring to the job schedule of most. Cole is saying here that when work is done, they can play.