This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
One two
Get behind the walls of new Roma, want to buy the farm
But the land's not yours to own?
Who owns Police? Who holds floor grease on a sandy beach?
Blood beach
Dance with a man he starts clutching, he ugly
Punks hung halo teach
Hugged by the math with the cable reach
A hundred and sixty-six channels lit
To train that animal shit
Where the mind's eye redefined
Where's God?
Buy a car, Kick tires
Back in Eighty-Six I lived
With a four-course artistry
Metal ones took turns showin' off colors and shit
Like I invaded the mating dance ritual
Criminal now
Wild things defined beautiful under my power
El Producto flash-fest-iss
Motherfuckers be like, "Ow, why haven't we left yet"
Blithering sideway twang, the youth and brain management troupe
The man is like BOOOP
You can't touch the Krush Groove
I live by the lunch table
Touched fables
Ducked labels
Lookout for the one he'd abide with the terrible stables
Signed to Rawkus
I'd rather be mouth fucked by Nazis unconscious
Callin' all bomb threats
Radio re-activated, caress
Under hella-ified missile defense
Fenced in, better blame it on fame shit and grin
Walk with a bag full of kittens
Take it to the river and throw yourself in
In about four seconds the ether will begin to leak
Who want to hold hands with this sicko malnutritionist
Soaked in newspeak?
Dissolve into the syncopated fragments of vinyl
splashed on loose leaf
We can embrace on the business end of my face first
Joe vs. the Volcano suicide beef
Dance with the vinyl monster
Devil in a blue skyline with clean conscience
Save the gesture
But can't save the children, weren't worth the effort
I'm a Caveman
Your modern ways frighten and confuse me
I watch your spirit box with the blinking lights and think
Are those little people trapped in that box? (No, Caveman)
But I do know converted mic digital 8-bus Mackie Avalon compression
Combined with 8-step effected
Dirty words paralyze words and infect shit
Infectious
Insofar as the ineffectual bed for elections
Development arrested
Trapped in the Cuckoo's nest
Looking for the nexus
If it's wild like that y'all found
infrared scope in the clutch of a tyrant
New World lullaby Sirens
Stuck migrants, bust 'em by violence
It's all bad timing
Getting merked on a Tram over Roosevelt Island
You think that's spacey?
Deep Space 9 millimeter, son, keep smiling
This is for the fringes and such
My generation just sit like dust
Feed 'em off of us and ask what I trust
Tell these stories, I'm right here holdin' my nuts
Right here holdin' my nuts
Right here holdin' my nuts
Right here holdin' my nuts
Right here holdin' my nuts
This is for the fringes and such
My generation ain't friends with slugs
Thank god for the drugs and drums
Tell these to read it, I'll be right here hidin' from guns
Right here hidin' from guns
Right here hidin' from guns
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the video for this song is great.
i could be way off, but it seems like the song is about his ordeal with the Rawkus lable.
@xheartbreakerx and when you put it into context that Rupert Murdoch was the majority shareholder of Rawkus by 1999, some of the other stuff in the song makes since too; however, I could be reading into it too much idk
Its about el's view on modern society, and how it doesn't provide us freedom, only pretends it does, for power. Nice words from the spinmachine, nothing more.
"Dirty words paralyze words and infect shit Infectious Insofar as the ineffectual bed for elections "
On money, materialism that doesn't make us happy either.
"To train that animal shit Where the mind's eye redefined Where's God? Buy a car , Kick tires"
There's alot more up there, on posers/plain retards in the arts, so he went his own way.<br /> <br /> "Like I invaded the mating dance ritual<br /> Criminal now<br /> Wild things defined beautiful under my power"<br /> <br /> And i wholeheartedly concur.
"Signed to Rawkus I'd rather be mouth fucked by Nazis unconscious"
that line makes it pretty clear. it's also a great mental image.
it's about the love of holding the gun, proving you're on top. ego --> scorpio listen to constelation funk
The line is not "ow why haven't we left yet" it's "Al, Why haven't we left yet?" in reference to the television show Quantum Leap.
I'm also pretty sure its "my generation just sit like ducks" and "Tell the historians" not "tell these stories"
"why haven't we LEPT" you mean.
"For the love of God, run."
This song is perfect. El-P is definitely one of the most creative hip hop artists in the studio these days.
@ kazinsky That line isn't about him "going his own way" far less egocentric -it's about the destruction of hip-hop as an art form in its four dimensions "With a four-course artistry" and the criminalisation of the real hip-hop culture by the state. The lyrics are: Metal worms took turns showin' off colors and shit Like I invaded the mating dance ritual Criminal now Why do things we find beautiful undermine power?
A lot of different versions of that one key line . . . I think its 'Criminal now. A lot of things I thought beautiful, under my power.' Which makes it a reference to him adopting a lawless lifestyle, and being successful with music, women, etc. Thus (notice the past tense) making them less beautiful now that he has them instead of wanting them.