Gasoline Dreams (feat. Khujo)

The song is about coke.

A lot of coke smells like gasoline because of the impurities left by the extraction process. The dreams refer to the odd dreams addicts get when they are off the drug for a couple of days.

The chorus refers to the fact that everyone they know likes the "smell of gasoline.", or the smell of coke. The rest of the chorus from the American Dream line to the end refers to the fact that all of the kids are doing coke and it's destroying their lives.

The first verse, starting with the obvious "All of my heroes did dope", talks about how everyone he looked up to was on blow and he couldn't understand why someone would throw away their lives with the stuff. The ending talks about how he has no time to do coke because "The world is moving fast and I'm losin' my balance///No time to dig, low low///To a place where ain't nowhere to go but up"

The second verse starts by stating the injustice that his dealer made millions while his cousin went to jail on possession alone (Didn't cook it (manufacture) or weigh it (sell/distribute). The rest of the verse is a statement against the War on Drugs because the problem is too large for law enforcement to do anything about it (it's "out of their jurisdiction"). It boils down to racism and crooked people, and the kids won't follow any laws because of the way they've seen the police ruin the lives of people doing the same thing they're doing (coke).

The final verse is the demonization of addicts by a supreme being. They put drug use on par with eating pork, which would be ludicrous to condemn someone for an eternity for. The condemnation of eating pork references the Old Testament of the Judeo-Christian Bible (Leviticus I believe) where pork is forbidden (See: Kosher). The end of the verse states that if condemnation and death is the penalty for drug use, then they belong with "Mr. Reaper" in the "Liquor Fire."

When you understand the title, the rest is easy to pick up on.

def. a take on how america is just filled with pullotion and greed, etc.

i think this is about how we are not learning from our mistakes because we are "burning" our past and destroying our future. We're only living for the shallow reasons of life...

i second hadiahmed

This song is pretty great. It's complaining about how American Oil Imperialism runs the world. Corrupt religion using people for money and angry youth that have no power to change anything. Also racism, too harsh of penalties for minor drug charges and police corruption.

Ricky Stratton is a character in the 80's TV show Silver Spoon about a kid who goes to live with his rich father but still has problems.

I dunno what Outkast's beef with pork or birth control is pork used to be unhealthy because of parasites a long time ago and not using birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancy is really really stupid.

For me, this is like an updated "Fight the Power". It's all about how america is stifling the dreams of young black men through racism, drugs, brutality, and the ghetto. How can someone have dreams when all your role models are locked up, strung out, or paying child support? If the "youth full of fire" aren't given the chance to break out of the cycle of violence and poverty, their energies will naturally be used to ignite their own dreams.

Come on now. I always thought this was like their most painfully obvious song. I mean, you don't always hear gas leaks. you damn sure don't see it but when you SMELL gas thats when you panic. because thats a lot of danger. Apple pie makes you makes you think of home. safety. comfort, you know? the similarities between those two lines make you think he's deliberately trying to couple the two. Comfort & safety until you smell the gas. thats when you panic.

It's not just about blacks IMO, it's about America (well, the western world) regardless of race and how it is overrun with corruption from the big corporations.

You got the War on Drugs which makes substances like cocaine and weed more dangerous through lack of regulation and legitimate competition to the black market and of course it doesn't accomplish its hypocritical adjectives (alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical drugs do just as much harm as illicit drugs), it's just a huge business, profited from by the legal drug companies, the prison industry, the cops, the justice system. So people get put in prison for years for mere possession of certain drugs which results in doing irrepairable harm to the person which in turn does harm to society - all profited off from the big corporations

The institution of marriage has become another big business with the justice system making huge money, mostly from divorce.

There's also the outright disrespect for the constitution in the US, with the federal government taking most of the powers constitutionally allocated to state governments, hence Big Boi's verse which I think alludes to how federal agents still target medical marijuana users and dispensaries in states where it is legal, such as California.

On a lighter note I really love the "Don't everybody like the taste of apple pie/smell of gasolene" lines - they can either be interpreted as sarcastic rhetorical questions or defiant statements of outspokenness/alienation