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Refers to his statement that it is necessary to understand melodies to use AutoTune correctly, or you shouldn’t at all.

T-Pain, he does great melodies. If you listen to Kanye, great melodies. If you listen to [West’s] ‘Say You Will’ or ‘Heartless,’ great melodies. [Lil Wayne and T-Pain’s] ‘Lollipop’ was a fantastic melody. Everybody can’t do it. Let them guys do it. They got their little niche, let’s move on."

However, Jay’s raps don’t even have melody. It’s all raw meaning no melodies need to be understood, this being one of the many reasons he won’t use it. He did try using it on Jeezy’s “Put On (Remix)”, but as this track highlights, he decided he didn’t need it.

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Sample of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye”, the 1969 single by Steam

Sports teams often sing this to vanquished opponents (in this case, auto-tune)

Jay cleverly sings along with this part of the song out of tune – just the type of thing that insincere artists use auto-tune to fix

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Frank Sinatra performed at the Blackpool Opera House on a 1953 tour of the UK. In 1953 Sinatra had just signed with Capitol Records, fresh off a supporting role in From Here To Eternity. This career upswing followed a disastrous three-year period for the singer in which Sinatra suffered on-and-off vocal trouble, got dropped from two record labels, and married and separated from Ava Gardner

The metanarrative around The Blueprint 3 release has often invoked a parallel between Sinatra’s and Hova’s respective comebacks. The idea seems to have cemented itself in the public consciousness after Kanye West’s infamous May 20, 2009 blog post on the music industry A-list in which Ye wrote “JAY IS SINATRA.”

And of course, Jay-Z straight up says “I am the new Sinatra” in “Empire State of Mind”

So there you go

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Apple cider vinegar can promote blood clotting.

The “cat” in question here seems to be the enema recipient, a “man” (“cat” was 1920’s slang for “dude”, also likening the man’s ass to a vagina with the feline nickname).

The odor of vinegar may be used to deter other “cats”–house cats, specifically–from crawling onto certain surfaces. Some pet owners use vinegar to eliminate urine odors from the litter box

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On & On is the lead single off of Erykah Badu’s Grammy Award-winning 1997 album Baduizm.

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Remy Martin cognac, also namedropped in Lil' Kim’s 1997 single “Not Tonight”

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