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Especially in a competitive rap scene, people play a lot of attention to lyrics from rappers – from the more subliminal or subtle disses (some good examples here) to the more open battles like Takeover and Ether. Slug is saying that people get a bit too obsessed, while simultaneously warning rappers that they should be wary of him.

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Worrying about small social situations in life is pointless, because we’re all going to be dust eventually. This view of the bigger picture makes all of our personal problems seem insignificant.

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Slug exploring the mentality of a performing artist: on the one hand the fans' impression of his is exceptionally important to his career and wellbeing, but on the other hand there is a lot of irrational hate from people which he can’t let affect him.

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Continuing the extended metaphorical narrative, Slug has distracted the woman he’s with (perhaps she is hip hop??) and she has left the water running

Which has flooded the basement. This represents the home of the majority of underground emcees who would have recorded their music in basement studios. Slug’s presence has resulted in the death of their careers.

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Continuing the theme from the previous line, Slug speaks about the calling rates charged when phoning in to the various adverts on TV which gave him ‘all he needed’.

Wordplay:

The Second Coming is a famous poem by William Butler Yeats (which incidently indirectly inspired the title of the album Things Fall Apart by The Roots) describing the second coming of Christ. Slug is saying that even religion is being bought and sold through advertising (having made comments about television religion later on this album).

He’s also using the phrase “second coming” sexually, describing an ejaculation (again) on the boobs of the woman mentioned in the next lines.

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Giving respect to the graffiti artists, who form one of the essential elements of hip hop. Indeed an early Atmosphere song Ear Blister was partly about graffiti and the cover of the EP that preceded the Overcast! album shows a train which has been painted.

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Alluding to a famous parable which appears in the Bible at Matthew 7:24-27, which speaks about the wise man building his house on a rock, whereas the foolish man built his on sand. Needless to say, the former house stood firm in a storm while the latter was washed away.

Likening racial injustice to quicksand (a sand in which any movements drag you deeper into it) Dr King is saying that the longer it continues the harder it will be to escape.

Brotherhood is a much better foundation upon which to build a society.

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Despite having been ‘free’ for a century, black people still found themselves economically disadvantaged and shunted into areas of poverty and public housing. The poverty rate for Black Americans was a staggering 55.1% in 1959, nearly 2.5 times that suffered by whites.

Dr King is making the well-known distinction between formal and substantive equality. Formal equality is simply equality in the eyes of the law. Though formal equality supposedly took place with the 14th Amendment, equality on paper merely perpetuated the status quo by allowing the wealthy to discard any type of redress or affirmative action would as different treatment of different groups differently.

Substantive equality considers the effects of laws and policies, in addition to their legal wording.

In reality, the African-American people in the ‘60s had neither. Especially in the south. Many of the Jim Crow laws (see here for some examples) kept society racially segregated on a legal level as well as a social and economic level. The supposed “freedom” had a hollow ring, and the fight for real equality needed to continue.

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Netsky (real name Boris Daenen) is a Belgian drum and bass producer who has been signed since 2009 with one of the genre’s leading labels, Hospital Records. He has released two albums in that time, with his melodic style (combining elements of the liquid and jungle sub-genres of drum and bass) becoming increasingly popular on dance floors in Europe.

Here is a video of one of his tracks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU4cnelEdi4

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Slug boasting about his vocabulary, showing it to be legit by his ability to spell words – something pretentious rappers trying to sound smart would not be able to do. As for the open arms and potent charms, Slug has long been known to be very honest with his fans (mostly through his music), and I’m sure there are a number of women all over the USA (maybe one of them named Lucy?) who can attest to the power of Slug’s charms.

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