Steppin' Up Lyrics

Lyric discussion by retron23 

Cover art for Steppin' Up lyrics by M.I.A.

This song is all gangster drug dealer club culture. It's kind of an industrial-dancehall answer to 50 Cent's 'In Da Club'. Weights by the ton for the party to enjoy...

Pretty sure the line is

Basslines and ass anything 's fast Humpin' on my leg Yo I'm on my fucking glass

which I took to mean she's high on her own amphetamine supply. "I'm tooled up to the tee" can have a double meaning: packing weapons but also blitzed on drugs. "I tie up just for fun" could be bragging that she's so hardcore she injects speed (or whatever) for the hell of it. There was a huge amount of amphetamine use in the London club scene back in the day, so there might be some nostalgia here. Obviously it's all just gangsta style and not meant to be taken as seriously as M.I.A.'s super political stuff. The chainsaw at the beginning reminded me of the ultraviolent scene in Scarface.

On the back of the disk: “They can rewrite history, but we can re rewrite it faster. We have speed in our hands, amphetamines in our system, and the system is corrupt.”