Crack Rock

General CommentLYRICS CORRECTION------A little rock left in that GLASS DICK. (A little bit left of the crack rock left in the pipe) Other than that lyrics look good.

Interpretation: Towards the latter half of Channel ORANGE, Frank focuses on the grittier pieces of growing up and living, which are a contrast to the comfortable (albeit 'fake') lifestyle in Sweet Life or Super Rich Kids. Here, the narrator opens up the song detailing how desperate the life of a crack addict, he knows he only has a bit of his drug left, he's alone, and it seems as though he's lost his love to the addiction. They used to be "madly involved" to the point where they would have unprotected sex, which Frank seems to scoff as a false way to quantify love.

The brilliant part of this song, and the album as a whole, is the dichotomy he sets up between drugs and love as two addicting things, which often commingle. The chorus/hook details the other person involved, his lover, who is not only smoking crack, but also playing a love game by throwing stones at glass houses. The glass home seems to be a metaphor for their relationship, or at least lives. The more they hit the crack rock, the greater the chance they have of ruining the glass house they've built with one another.

The second verse, he details the full scale of his female counterpart's addiction. She steals, 'shucks and jives', (I suppose our minds will have to entertain a meaning for that one......) and robs to get her fix. Her family doesn't even let her near their children because she is a fiend.

The final leg of the song is a frenzied string of lyrics that tells of what it's like when the drugs run out. "Pushing" dope (which is an interesting choice of words, because dope usually means heroine, or pot, but not crack, so it's interesting that he's bringing up dope... but also, it may connect with the glass house, because glass can be a street name for heroine or meth) is when the last of the drug's residue is fished from the piece by pushing something through it, so she has run out of drugs and is now in a frenzy to get more, describing a crooked cop she's buying from perhaps (which is a common occurrence believe it or not)


The song ends with the junkie succumbing to her high, which at this point, it's questionable whether any story line continues, which is fitting because once the high is reached, nothing else matters because the real world ceases to exist as "you" sinks into nirvana, which is the sad part of addiction, the need to escape.

He ends it by saying the girl is in the gutter, the lowest of low. He recognizes he is better than her, since he is not there with her, and their glass home has been broken.

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