I think this is more to do with him feeling out of place in New York as a recent transplant to the city.
It’s also a subtle nod to Rakim’s lines in Paid in Full:
So I walk down the street, whistling this
Feeling out of place cause man do I miss
Two for fives has to mean two crack hits (rocks or vials) for five dollars. Selling $5 bags for $2 makes no sense — that’s a 60% discount! And would Smoothe Tha Hustler really be so willing to give up 35c on a $2 transaction?
A few years later Chuck D and Hank Shocklee bestowed the name Leaders of the New School upon a group from Long Island that they had been mentoring. They also gave group members Busta Rhymes and Charlie Brown their names.
This isn’t the first time that Chuck brings up the irony of Public Enemy being too black even for so-called black radio. See similar comments in Rebel Without a Pause and Bring The Noise. He went on to write How to Kill a Radio Consultant.
In some countries (like the UK), “Bass” was the start of his last jam because Bring The Noise had been released in the interim. But we knew what he meant.
The lyric should be:
Number one, never on the run, about the gun
It’s partly a callback to the song Public Enemy No. 1 in which Chuck says:
I’ll show you my gun, my Uzi weighs a ton, because I’m Public Enemy No. 1
They of course followed up with the song Miuzi Weighs a Ton which had even more explicit gun imagery. This kind of gun talk (and the fake Uzis carried by the S1Ws) had the mainstream media shook for a while. But the guns weren’t real whereas the militant political message (like their support for Farrakhan and Assata Shakur) was.
On the other hand, if you look closely at the “Miuzi” 12" sleeve you can see several members of Public Enemy’s “5-0” Posse carrying pistols.
Not sure about this. “South Bronx” and “The Bridge Is Over” were huge hits from day one. If anything, Shan was the one feeling the pressure as his responses were nowhere near as well received.
I think this line is more to do with the reaction to the gangster image of the first album. While popular, BDP took some flak for promoting violence, especially given what happened to Scott La Rock. This criticism was largely silenced by the second album (although some people still made a fuss about the sleeve).
The ghostwriter business is way off. It’s ghost as in gone as in Swayze as in Casper.
It’s also for the weekend, hence the two day stay mentioned on the next line.
As tempting as the blunt wordplay is I’m pretty sure he says shrunk and not smoked here.
Refers to respect and girls. This is stunts meaning women (as in Stunts, Blunts and Hip Hop).