Using a driving metaphor to describe his entrance into the game, saying he didn’t play by the rules or pay attention to the advice of other rappers. Often that can be more harmful than helpful. He stuck with his own instinct and common sense.

People often blame bad weather for their depression or lack of desire to go outside. The depression caused by winter is known as seasonal affective disorder and is being increasingly studied by medical scientists.

Slavery is as old as civilization. It was a big part of both the Roman and Greek empires, and was more recently the subject of a trans-Atlantic trade which is its most famous example. Part of Marx’s point for mentioning the “freeman/slave” dichotomy is that soon as there is slavery in a society, the society becomes divided between those who are told what to do and those who choose what to do.

Continuing the theme of being on a balancing beam, Slug is telling himself to persist with his intended course in order to do justice to a horror which has been robbing everybody involved of sleep.

Slug doesn’t want to be seen as attempting to capitalize on the publicity that the murder trial of the janitor (who worked at a venue where Atmosphere performed one night) who raped and killed a girl who had come to the show. That’s not what telling this story in a song is about. It’s about how it is still haunting him.