I’ll never be complacent about teaching, but the politics of the profession can leave you feeling jaded and cynical (especially when the current Education Secretary is doing his best to dismantle the state sector…)

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These climbing metaphors underline a key concern regarding progress: do you ever reach the end goal?

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Look out for the double syntax in ‘where I am exactly here’, in which “I am” doubles up in two clauses. The meaning is almost lost in the cadence, but I like how this reflects the confusion of my feelings.

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A play on words with this simile here. Sonic is the famous Sega-born speedy hedgehog, who is in search of Chaos emeralds.

The simile evokes the mayhem that is teaching. Fast, furous, energetic, noisy and frantic, just like one of Sonic’s adventures.

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The PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate of Education) is a teacher training course in the UK. As a mentor of new teachers I often meet people who are hungry to become amazing teachers. They literally want to be in the position I am in, ie: an established teacher.

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This is a song about limits, and breaking them. In my career as a teacher (at the time of writing) I was worried that there wasn’t much else to achieve in the classroom. Of course, life is progress, but on paper I had reached a limit.

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U God is on a different level. He hits us with a disjointed set of items that, juxtaposed, create an overall image of… well, toughness.

The technical term for an artist’s ability to accept this level of disjointedness with no anxiety is “negative capability,” coined by John Keats in a letter to his brothers:

…at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason

U-God here is hitting us from many directions with the consciousness-altering power of his lyrical style:

“Pile-driver Tut boulder face blow hulk”

The Transformer “Rumble” has Pile Driver arms. They would be capable of destroying a “boulder”-sized block, like that in the “face” of the Sphinx. A superhuman level of strength would be required to “blow holes in the face” of such a monument, a strength level likely possessed in the Marvel universe, e.g. by “The Hulk”.

“Anger rap book causing chest plate smoke”

The “notepad” in which a lyricist pens his lyrics is similar to a “Vancian” Spell Book. Chest plate smoke is the result of an explosive or incendiary attack on an armored opponent that results in their “chest plate” literally “smoking”.

“Monster Truck, punk, elephant gun poke”

U-God’s style hits like a “Monster Truck”, and comparatively, the opponent is a “punk”, a military term for “soft target”. The weakest attack of this style (referred to as a “poke”) has the attack power of an Elephant Gun.

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And back to reality. Kastro isn’t even that rich. His problems are financial.

Often, new hot rappers are offered deals that seem attractive with cash advances, but the labels expect them, themselves, to pay back what they initially spend through future sales. So really, they haven’t got the money they thought they had. It’s a cut-throat world. The Cinderella ball is officially over.

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A lot of heads got into hip hop through DJing, the backbone of hip hop culture. The industry standard turntables are the Technics 1200 or 1210 model, virtually indestructible and featuring a high enough torque to allow for heavy abuse and scratching.

Gemini made a cheap knock off copy that were far less expensive, but inferior. A lot of kids will have started off on ‘cheap shit’ like this before getting the real deal.

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J is in full storytelling mode here. He outlines the path that has led him to where he is, from an awkward adolescent to a confident and polished MC.

Selector is a reference to the DJ. An MC would tell the ‘selector’ what to do, usually when a song was so good that it needed to be rewound to the beginning.

J subsequently rewinds the scene back to 1989, when flat top haircuts were fashionable and he was but a young teenager.

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