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A reference to Lupe’s song, “Sunshine” from his debut album Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor. The song is another filled with complexity, as the girl mentioned throughout the song is used as a metaphor for Hip-Hop as a whole.

Lupe doesn’t follow the typical rap trope of making songs for women, and when he does, they’re not as simple as they may seem on the surface.

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“Mean and Vicious” is the 3rd track on Lupe’s mixtape, Fahrenheit 1/15: Revenge of the Nerd. The song is noted for its exquisite complexity.

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These lines are a Matrix reference. In the movie, Morpheus, wearing a long coat and pince-nez sunglasses, sitting in strange chair, offers hacker-turned-hero Neo the philosophical and literal choice between two pills, red or blue. The pills were metaphors for either forgetting about the strange things he had seen and going back to being a “normal” person in the world or leaving normalcy and illusion behind in favor of the harder, more dangerous life of one who knows the truth. Faced with the same decision, Lupe took both pills.

The metaphor is Lupe’s duality: his existence in both the commercial/corrupt and artistic/pure worlds of rap.

“Locs” is Southern California slang for sunglasses.

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There are many things happening in this grouping of lines which are constructed as a causal chain revolving around Lupe’s senses. It all falls under one idea: Lupe knows of the success that comes from dumbed-down music, but he will stay true to his complexity and avoid it.

  • “Peerless” is used as a double entendre. He’s saying that he doesn’t have peers, meaning he’s above everyone else. “Peerless”—or inability to “peer”—leads to “eyeless”.

  • Having no eyes, he cannot cry tears. Being “tearless” shows he has no regrets, but by stating, “my iris resides where my ears is” he is not only suggesting that he pays attention to what he hears and that he can ‘see sounds’, but that he literally can’t cry as his eyes are where his ears are. Moreover, there is a possible double entendre with “tearless”, as no one is on Lupe’s level (or in his tier).

  • As Lupe’s iris is not in the correct spot, he is “blinded”. Additionally, he “sees” the dumbed-down music he hears for what it truly is, and it sucks so bad that it blinds him.

  • He can’t literally see the music, but as this dumbed-down style of music is swarming Hip-Hop, it surrounds him. However, he will veer away from allowing it to affect his own music.

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Lupe is “earless” so he can'’t listen to critics telling him to dumb down his work. However, he wants you to listen closely to what he’s saying. This is the first of many contradictions and extensive plays on words that are scattered throughout this track.

Additionally, “Now hear this” is an archaic set phrase used to introduce longer perorations. In this instance, the song itself is the peroration.

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A sprawling polemic about the pressures to simplify one’s lyrics to appeal to the mainstream – Lupe will have none of it.

It is a song Russian novel-esque in its depth, and rich with references: 3 different hooks, lengthy verses, one intro, and multiple outros.

This song, among others, is why we have dubbed Lupe the RapGenius™ King of Lyrical Trickiness

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A shout out to Lupe’s record label, First and Fifteenth Entertainment, also known as FNF.

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Referencing Max Weber’s coined phrase “Protestant Work Ethic” in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Scott goes beyond a “24/7” grind. He works so hard he’s going into hours that don’t even exist in a single day! He also ties back a line repeated in previous verses, “see you in hell.” Now, Cudi has overcome his demons. Instead of going to hell with them, he’s leaving them behind, not allowing them to pull him back in.

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This is an internal struggle going on in Scott’s head. He has demons telling him “No”: He can’t suceed and follow his dreams. However, Cudi slays demons like David slays Goliaths, and interjects with “Yeah!” to let the demons know they can’t win. He’s going to keep doing what he wants.

Cudi said in an interview that this song was supposed to be the “Eye of the Tiger” of the 21st century. The fast, repetitive “no"s and "yeah"s have the same effect as the fast, repetitve guitar in "Eye of the Tiger”.

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The story of David and Goliath is a story about a young boy named David who is tasked with saving his army by destroying the mighty giant Goliath. The odds seemed to be against him because of the difference in size, but he was able to defeat him. Cudi feels like this is how he used to be; suppressed by a force much bigger than himself.

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