The double entendre — French for “double meaning” — is synonymous with puntastic rap.

“Double Entendre” is defined in the English lexicon as “a word or expression capable of two interpretations”. An example, from “Bricks” by Gucci Mane:

95 Air Max cause I’m a dope runner

Gucci’s a “dope” (good) “runner” (jogger) and a “dope” (cocaine) “runner” (seller).

There are examples aplenty in the world hip-hop — indeed, doubling up is the hallmark of a clever rapper.

Then, there is the double entendre’s deformed, antisocial, overachieving cousin: the elusive TRIPLE entendre (gasp!) — a single phrase capable of being interpreted as having THREE (3) possible meanings.

The triple entendre is an elusive-ass motherfucker. Some scholars say it does not exist! — they claim alleged triple entendres are usually just misunderstood homophones.

At Rap Genius, we believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy — and triple entendres. We just think they are damn hard to put together! For a REAL triple entendre to come together, the audience needs to cast a wide semantic web. Triples are a two-way street — the artist and audience have to work together (OR — the audience can just read Rap Genius).

The current “triple entendroversy” (triple entendre controversy) of rap music began with this infamous Jay-Z line from Jay & Drake’s collaborative paean to the Illuminati — “Light Up”:

Oww
Hoes turn they heads like owls
I’m the man of the hour
Triple entendre, don’t even ask me how

Of course, that’s not a triple entendre by any means. It’s not even a double entendre!! It’s a homophone (not even a very good one..) This is what happens when you write songs dedicated to a powerful, dangerous cult, ladies and gentlemen.

This line led to a lot of ridicule for Jay, of course; more importantly, it incited fans to start looking for examples of ACTUAL triple entendres in rap lyrics.

Rap Genius is proud to present you with a list of known triples (holla at us in the comments if you think we missed something!) The first two examples are from none other than Jay-Z himself, who has actually made two triple entendres in the same song. What a G, right?

Jay’s “Triple Double” on Hello Brooklyn 2.0

I don’t half-step on the ‘caine

1. To “half-step” means to act fake. In 1988, rapper Big Daddy Kane released a classic track called “Ain’t No Half-Steppin'”, which Jay is referencing.
2. Jay doesn’t “half-step” by diluting the cocaine that he sells.
3. People use a cane to help themselves walk (step) better. The cane prevents him from half-steppin', bringing the meaning full circle.

Just a few lines later, Jay drops this gem:

So in a couple years baby I'mma bring you some Nets

1. Jay-Z is a co-owner of the New Jersey Nets (an NBA team). The ownership of the Nets is trying to move the team from New Jersey to Brooklyn.
2. He’s bringing actual fishing nets (the previous line is “My fine ho, we got some victims to catch.”)
3. Since Brooklyn is described as a woman in the line above, this is also a play on the sexy stockings one might buy for a girlfriend (“Nets” being 1920’s stocking slang).

Eminem post-rehab

Recovery demonstrates Eminem’s technical brilliance, exemplified in some trippy trips. From “Won’t Back Down”:

I’m the big shot, get it, dick-snots?
You’re just small pokes, little pricks

1. The previous line is “I’m the longest needle around here”. Going with the needle theme, while Em is a big one (needles are often called shots) and makes big pricks in the skin, other guys are small needles that make tiny pricks in the skin
2. “Prick” is a derogatory name to call someone — usually a man — that means about the same thing as “jerk” or “asshole”
3. “Prick” is also slang for a penis; considering the phallic theme running through the last few lines, Em seems to also be making fun of other guys' small members (remember that Eminem is purported to have a mystically large penis.. for a white guy)

Eminem and Jay’s triples — while technically masterful — are not the sort of rap lines you’d quote to friends at cocktail parties! They are reminiscent of a genius adolescent showing off — too elaborate. Triple entendres in the Golden Age of Rap were more accidental, unassuming and catchy.

From Wu-Tang Clan’s 1993 classic, “C.R.E.A.M.”:

Only way I begin to G off was drug loot

“G off” meaning:

1. To “get off” (have a figuative orgasm)
2. Become a “G” (gangsta)
3. Make “G’s” (thousands of dollars)

CLEAN & SIMPLE! Every syllable counts; Raekwon demonstrates that he is the Genius Minimalist of Hip-Hop / the Matisse of Rap.

Triple entendres are easier to make if the whole song is already a double entendre or extended metaphor (i.e. “I Used To Love H.E.R.” — Common’s metaphysical conceit dedicated to his “lady” hip-hop). In “Worst Enemy”, where Tech N9ne uses the concept of a friend-turned-enemy to talk about his dick, his double entendre-in-a-double entendre becomes a triple (feel me?):

Everyday you wanted me on a mission

Meaning:

1. A literal friend would send him on missions (to get drugs, etc.)
2. His dick wanted him on a mission to get pussy
3. “A mission” sounds like “emission,” another word for ejaculating, which is a dick’s goal

Even rarer is a triple entendre combined with a double entendre, like underground rapper Loaded Lux demonstrates in a street freestyle:

The jail feel like shampoo, that was the cell son blew

1. The whole jail feels like shampoo, because the prison showers metaphorically extend to the rest of the prison, as people can get raped anywhere in the prison. In fact, that cell right there is where his friend was forced to blow a guy
2. “Cell son blew” = “sale son blew”, as in, that was the sale (drug deal) that he blew, and now he’s in jail
3. Selsun Blue is a type of shampoo (the double entendre being “the gel feel like shampoo”)

Lastly, because it’s too ambiguous to classify, an honorable mention goes out to the line that started Rap Genius:

From whippin' the bacon rolls to outside whippin' the bacon Rolls

This is taken to mean that Cam'ron has gone from eating bacon rolls (cheap calories) to riding in a Rolls Royce the color of bacon. The second “bacon” could also be bakin' as in “awesome” or “a place where weed gets smoked.” Or, rolls (in either case) could be ecstacy Cam was selling.

You follow?

So far (thanks God), Rap Genius has avoided beef. But, honestly, how long is that going to last?

We’re worried that pretty soon, either:

• Some B-status rapper will feel miffed that we haven’t explained any of his songs, and will go buckwild..

OR

• A G.O.A.T MC will grow impatient, roll up on Rap Genius with his Clique, and challenge our interpretation of his lyrics

Since cartography = power, we’re preemptively launching the Rap Map™. We’ve mapped every significant location in the corpus of hip-hop. Want to take a stroll down Headland & DeLowe? Or maybe you are a dapper Midwesterner trying to get up in the Glock-Glock for some dollars?

Don’t even “trip” — we’ve got you; the Rap Map™ is like a guided international tour through the history of hip-hop..

And of course, if you ever have beef with a G.O.A.T (and a smartphone with GPS capabilities), you can locate the G.O.A.T on the Rap Map™, e-mail directions to your Goons.. and rain on that motherfucker’s parade! POP, POP, POP!

For those who have already taken a look at the Rap Map™, I know you are asking yourself: “but where is Rap Genius HQ?!”

Rap Genius HQ is nowhere to be found on the Rap Map! U Can’t C Me, bitch! We’re in the Internet vortex..

Everybody knows the history of hip-hop, right? It used to be all about telling the hard truths of the underclass to a world that didn’t want to hear it. Rappers were like Christian, socially-minded Robin Hoods.

AND THEN the world got to it and corrupted the noble, pure art form. Now — having lost its original impetus of exposing social injustice — rap music is all about bling and bitches..

Sadly, this myopic creation-myth is nothing more than a pack of self-righteous lies!

The first thing that’s wrong with it, of course, is that In The Beginning hip-hop didn’t have any words! At all!! As Kool Herc — hip-hop’s primordial O.G., the man who started it all — demonstrates in the video below, the art form originally started in the early 1970’s with DJs playing instrumental breaks (instead of whole songs) at dance parties.

The rapper was there to keep the party going — hence the “Yes, yes, y'all” chants of yesteryear.

The original “party MCs” were NOT keen on quoting abortion statistics or preaching Islam (which can be a huuge downer and kill the party mood!)

The alleged cardinal sins of today — excessive materialism, degradation of women, etc., are present in the earliest rap lyrics because (trust me) that’s what you like to hear about while you’re grinding.

Let’s examine two pioneering rap songs. King Tim III’s “Personality Jock” (1979), has the same kind of exaggerated boasting that modern-day critics snipe at, plus encouragement to the ladies to “let your body work”:

Then there is the Rosetta Stone of the old-school: “Rapper’s Delight”. This Meme Song of Early Rap™ was not immune to bling and booty. Big Bank Hank’s verse (which was, lest we forget, stolen from Grandmaster Caz), discusses women in ways that would be familiar to his Too-Short-inspired protégés:

I’m…the ladies' pimp
The women fight for my delight…
He can’t satisfy you with his little worm
But I can bust you out with my super-sperm

REVEALED: The Meme Rap of the Golden Age is little more than a “fuck song”

So, if the sins of contemporary hip-hop were there in the beginning, why does the myth persist? It has much to do with the Cult of the “MC Messiah”..

Evolving away from a party art form and towards a recorded medium, hip-hop abandoned DJ-centricity, with the audience’s focus shifting to the MC. The early MCs attained a cult of personality. With no requirement to be gangsters, rappers could focus on wordplay. In this “Neolithic” Age of Hip-Hop, rap and thuggery remained hermetically sealed; in “Ghetto Qu'ran”, 50 Cent pines for the days when rappers were rappers, and gangsters were gangsters.

MCs were free to have a variety of personalities: There were ladies' men like Big Daddy Kane, Afrocentrists like the Jungle Brothers, tough guys like Schoolly D, and — yes — even the Ur-Jesus MCs (Public Enemy) spewing forth sociopolitical commentary.

In Modern Times — unlike the “Golden Age” — rappers have a limited range of “acceptable personalities” to choose from. Rappers need to pretend to sell drugs, be ex-convicts.. and Heaven forbid if we listen to an ex-C.O.!

The situation continues to the present day. It’s to the point where even Lil Wayne — a deeply idiosyncratic fellow who has been recording since he was knee-high to a grasshopper — feels the need to constantly talk about his gang affiliations and propensity to shoot people. In Weezy’s defense, his Thug Impostor-status is entertainingly absurd — who ever heard of a 5'6'‘ goon / pussy-eating afficionado with such gusto?

The narrowed spectrum of acceptable MC personas has made it especially tough for female rappers to adapt. Female Golden Age rappers had mainstream success with a wide variety of sounds and images. Now, female rappers who want mainstream exposure can either be sexy:

or, um, slutty (and sexy too..):

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

The reasons for this change are many and multi-faceted, and too involved to catalog here — the growth of hip-hop as a viable and profitable genre, the overwhelming commercial success of gangsta rap (in particular The Chronic and its ilk), the consolidation of the record business, the entry of actual gangsters into the hip-hop industry, the death of Yo! MTV Raps, racist social expectations and pressures on artists and labels, etc., etc.

So are we finished? Is the Death of Rap to be greeted with “Gangsta Tears”? There’s one “crack in the pavement”, as it were, that suggests otherwise… and it looks like this:

Kanye’s success has proven that the alleged need to be gangster in order to sell records was always false (are you listening, Game?).

Kanye is hardly a sociopolitical powerhouse (he seems more worried about finding skinny jeans that fit properly than spreading the Social Gospel) — but at least he’s different! Kanye has made room in the mainstream for rappers with little or no claims on street toughness.

However, even now, it’s too early to tell if Yeezy represents a paradigm shift or is sui generis. Keep in mind that even megastars can’t change the game all by themselves..

Non-gangsta artists like B.O.B., Kid Cudi, Drake and Wale are following Kanye’s footprint into the mainstream.. but who knows??

What are your thoughts? Is there room in the mainstream now for a wider variety of images and styles? Or — Kanye aside — are we likely to see rappers “whippin' it real hard” for years to come?

DISCUSS.

I’m leading the league in at least six statistical categories right now
Best flow, most consistent, realest stories
Most charisma, I set the most trends
And my interviews are hotter

— Jay-Z, from “Breathe Easy”

Imagine this: you are sitting in your Goldman Sachs interview, and the hiring partner busts a Jay-Z, claiming dominance across different statistical categories (“Most IPOs, highest leverage” etc.)

What would you say?

A: You would say “QUANTIFY THAT SHIT!”

Well, that’s exactly what Rap Genius has to say to Jay-Z: while ‘best interview’ isn’t an easily measurable metric (and to be honest, he’s barely a top-10 interview), we actually can, using state-of-the-art linguistic analysis software, quantify Jay’s performance in some other rap categories like speed, vocab variety, word length, etc. the same way we come up with statistics for sports (or finance).

Let’s take a look at our most powerful stat: Rhyme Density™. Rhyme Density™ equals:

(Total number of syllables that are a part of a rhyme) ÷ (Total syllables)

So in a song with a rhyme density of .30 (Jay-Z’s career average btw), 30% of the syllables are part of rhymes, and 70% are not.

Rhyme Density™ basically tells you how efficient a rapper is: like a Native American who uses all parts of the animal to sustain his life, an efficient rapper uses all parts of a line in his rhymes.

To give Rhyme Density™ some teeth, compare these two verses:

1 — From Eminem’s “Without Me” (rhyme density = .49)

2 — From Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy” (rhyme density = .23)

Now, this isn’t to say that “Without Me” is a better song than “Juicy”. Different song styles will yield different numbers. BUT — we do contend that over the course of a career, the rappers with the highest rhyme densities are basically the best technical rappers.

So Based on Rhyme Density™, which rappers test out the best?

1. MF Doom .44
2. Cam'ron .41
3. Big Pun .40
4. Eminem .38
5. Fabolous .36

MF Doom surprised us a little. First the big New Yorker profile and now this…it’s too much! Cam'ron is much more culturally relevant and interesting (plus he doesn’t need to wear a mask, he’s naturally silly), so we at RapMetrics™ consider him the G.O.A.T. MC overall.

Cam receiving the call from RapMetrics™ with the news that he’s the G.O.A.T.

Here are some other RapMetrics™ insights (visit the RapMetrics™ blog for more):

1. Jay-Z significantly upped his Rhyme Density for “Renegade” (.46) relative to the rest of his career (.30), probably in order to match Eminem’s dense style.
2. Joe Budden generally has low rhyme density (~.25) and very long lines. The reason he’s considered such a complex artist (post-“Pump It Up”) has more to do with complex emotions than complex rhymes.
3. Kanye’s best song rhyme-wise is “Jesus Walks” (which he admits was “co-written”by Rhymefest).
4. Rappers who use big words tend to sell fewer albums.

Of course, some RapMetrics™ results are just too counter-intuitive to accept. Illmatic and Blueprint don’t really stand out as albums, RapMETRICally™ speaking — even though in real life they are two of the hardest albums of all time. Notorious B.I.G. is quantitatively average, while ACTUALLY he was one of the best rappers who ever lived. What RapMetrics™ does is provide a basis for who is good, technically speaking. Quality of music doesn’t necessarily mean great technical ability, so take it all with a grain of salt.

OUR VISION: One day, nerds are going to be arguing online about rap using numbers instead of their totally worthless subjective opinion! This is the goal of RapMetrics™..

RAP NERDS: If you have any hypotheses you’d like us to test, let us know in comments…

It’s all mathematics!

Note: This analysis is done by Liban Ali Yusuf of RapMetrics™ which is based on a peer-reviewed paper found here

Imagine there’s a rapper building a lot of buzz. He’s from a cold place (brrrr!) not known for producing hip-hop artists. He works almost exclusively with one producer from his home turf. He’s a heart-throb who manages to attract a significant female following by penning rap songs about love, sex, and heartbreak.

He tours a lot; the ups-and-downs of road life are a significant theme in his lyrics. He collaborates with another well-respected, dreadlocked rapper. He’s biracial! Who is this upstart? You guessed it: it’s Slug from Atmosphere!

Sean “Slug” Daley of Minneapolis' Atmosphere was Drake before Drake was a gleam in the eye of Degrassi: The Next Generation’s producers. Although his last album got a bit experimental, Slug has been Drakin’ it for years now:

• Touring his ass off for a decade
• Starting a label that puts out albums for his lil homies: DOOM, Brother Ali, P.O.S., Freeway, etc.
• Making Jewish girls scream

Imagine how Slug feels now that a 23 year-old former child actor dressed head to toe in Banana Republic has made waayyyyy more money by jocking his steez.

PARALELLS IN DRAKE / SLUG RAP

The insistent love song

• Slug in 2000: “Don’t Ever Fucking Question That”: I love you, don’t ever fucking question that!
• Drake: “Find Your Love”: I better find your loving, I better find your heart…
• ADVANTAGE: Slug

The introspective, “love-me-because-I’m deep” song:

• Slug in 2002: “God Loves Ugly”: I wear my scars like the rings on a pimp
• Drake: “Fireworks”: How many of our parents' marriages lasted? I was only 5; I bet I barely reacted
• ADVANTAGE: Drake

The “you-broke-my-heart-even-though-I-just-met-you” song:

• Slug in 2000: “Body Pillow”: I’ve always dug the way you love the way your tattoos intimidate men. I guess I’m one of them
• Drake: “Fall for Your Type”: I swear I always fall for your type, yeah, for your type… (HORRIBLE SONG!)
• ADVANTAGE: Slug

The “I’m-on-the-road-right-now-baby-so-I-might-have-to-fuck-other-girls” song

• Slug in 2003: “Always Coming Back Home to You”: Thug love on the corner by the Walgreens. Lookin at me like I’m just another square Saltine
• Drake: “Successful”: My girl love me, but fuck it my heart beats slow. And right now the tour bus is looking like a freak show
• ADVANTAGE: Drake

The “light-hearted-duet-about-ladies-with-the-dreadlocked-guy” song:

• Slug in 2007, with Felt: “Dirty Girl”: Came to get an oil change for my girlfriend’s car, but by the time I had left, I was short of breath and broken hearted
• Drake, with Lil Wayne: “Miss Me”: Nothing ever changes so tonight is like tomorrow night. I will have a model wife, your bitch is as hot as ice
• ADVANTAGE: Slug

So, sorry to shatter your dreams, girls, but Drake is not the first “Rapper With Feelings”. My boy Slug has slightly better flow, equally strong ties to Judaism, and – sure he’s a little bit older! – but (TRUST ME) 23 is too young for a rapping man. Slug, meanwhile, should be asking himself the Eternal Question: “What did Drake’s agent do right that mine did wrong?.. and, can I sue?”