A play on the phrase, “don’t bite the hand that feeds you”.

Since Drake’s ‘hand’ has already been ‘bit’, meaning he’s already been betrayed, his friend-turned-foe is not ‘fed’ anymore, so he’s obviously starving! YOU NEED DRAKE FOR THE RADIO HITS!

Some believe this is a shot at former friend/labelmate The Weeknd.

No matter how much [insert generic rapper] disagrees with the lists being made for the top MCs in the game, it is ultimately of no use, since [generic rapper] has no chance of ever getting on that list.

Drake expressed a similar sentiment on 5 AM in Toronto

While there are a lot of rappers talking about selling kilos, i.e,‘ keys ’ of cocaine, Drake can still make money off of music that doesn’t involve drug-dealing references. This could be a shot at Pusha T, an artist known for rapping about his drug-dealing past. The two have history so it’s definitely possible.

This is also a play off the two lines before where he references different keys on a keyboard (caps lock, return, shift.)

These keys could also refer to the musical ones. The second half of this line includes the term “pitch,” which is a musical term used in reference to placing sounds on a frequency-related scale.

Not exactly predisposed to elegance but graceful despite the size, like an elephant, largely proportioned, Killer Mike unexpectedly flows slickly with grace and co-ordination comparable to that of an elephant. P.S if you hadn’t guessed he’s also African American.

Mike has made a similar reference before on his previous album’s track “Untitled”, opening the song by saying
You are witnessing elegance in the form of a black elephant

Mike has even gone on record saying that the African elephant is his spirit animal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd1YkvmikqA#t=06m48s

Alliteration between “elegance” and “elephant.”

Before RTJ took off, Mike had announced in 2013 that his next solo album would be called “The Elegant Elephant."

Reference to Eric “Vietnam” Sadler of the production group The Bomb Squad,who handled much of the production on Public Enemy’s early work

Waiting for the dust to settle is used to describe waiting till the fight or negative situation is dissipated, so both the partners can talk normally to each other again, instead of fighting and expressing negativity.

Sampled from Public Enemy’s Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos off their 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

Two drinks popular among rappers, Patrón Tequila

and Don Julio Tequila

December 4th is an influential date in hip hop – it is Jay-Z’s birthday and Pimp C’s deathday. Kweli acknowledges the impact their music has had.