Decoded (16 page)

Big Pimpin’. (3:10)

Uhh, uh uh uh / It’s big pimpin baby … / It’s big pimpin, spendin cheese / Feel me … uh-huh uhh, uh-huh … / Ge-ge-geyeah, geyeah / Ge-ge-geyeah, geyeah … / You know I thug em, fuck em, love em, leave em / Cause I don’t fuckin need em / Take em out the hood, keep em lookin good /
But I don’t fuckin feed em
¹
/ First time they fuss I’m breezin / Talkin bout, “What’s the reasons?” / I’m a pimp in every sense of the word, bitch / Better trust than believe em / In the cut where I keep em /
till I need a nut, til I need to beat the guts
²
/ Then it’s, beep beep and I’m pickin em up / Let em play with the dick in the truck /
Many chicks wanna put Jigga fists in cuffs
³
/ Divorce him and split his bucks / Just because you got good head, I’ma break bread / so you can be livin it up? Shit I / parts with nothin, y’all be frontin / Me give my heart to a woman? /
Not for nothin, never happen
⁴
/
I’ll be forever mackin
⁵
/ Heart cold as assassins, I got no passion / I got no patience / And I hate waitin / Hoe get yo’ ass in / And let’s RI-I-I-I-I-IDE check em out now / RI-I-I-I-I-IDE, yeah / And let’s RI-I-I-I-I-IDE check em out now / RI-I-I-I-I-IDE, yeah / [
Chorus: Jay-Z
] / We doin big pimpin, we spendin cheese / Check em out now / Big pimpin, on B.L.A.D.’s / We doin big pimpin up in N.Y.C. / It’s just that Jigga Man, Pimp C, and B-U-N B / Yo yo yo big pimpin, spendin cheese / We doin big pimpin, on B.L.A.D.’s / We doin big pimpin up in N.Y.C. /
It’s just that Jigga Man, Pimp C, and B-U-N B
⁶
/ On a canopy my stamina be enough for Pamela Anderson Lee / MTV jam of the week / Made my money quick then back to the streets but /
Still sittin on blades,
⁷
gettin off treys /
Standin on the corner of my block hustlin
⁸
/ Still gettin that cane / half what I paid slippin right through customs / It’ll sell by night it’s extra white … / I got so many grams if the man find out / it will land me in jail for life / But I’m still big pimpin spendin chesse / with B.U.N. B, Pimp C, and Timothy /
We got bitches in the back of the truck, laughin it up
⁹
/ Jigga Man that’s what’s up

I Was Not a Pushover. (2:20)

Uh-huh uh huh uh / Gee-gee-geyeah / Baby, watchin, streets / Uh-huh uh huh uh / You don’t have to look / Uh-huh uh / The streets is watching / Check it, check / Uh-huh uh, check /
Look, if I shoot you, I’m brainless / But if you shoot me, then you’re famous
¹
—what’s a nigga to do? / When the streets is watching, blocks keep clocking /
Waiting for you to break, make your first mistake
²
/ Can’t ignore it, that’s the fastest way to get extorted /
But my time is money, and twenty-five, I can’t afford it
³
/ Beef is sorted like Godiva chocolates / Niggaz you bought it, I pull the slide back and cock it / Plan aborted, you and your mans get a pass / This rhyme, you’re operating on bitch time / Y’all niggaz ain’t worth my shells, all y’all niggaz / tryin to do is hurt my sales, and stop trips to John Menielly / The type to start a beef then, run to the cops /
When I see you in the street got, one in the drop
⁴
/ Would I rather be on tour getting a hundred a pop / Taking pictures with some bitches, in front of the drop / The streets is watching / [
Chorus
] / When the streets is watching / Blocks keep clocking / Waiting for you to break, make your first mistake / Can’t ignore it / Now it’s hard not to kill niggaz / It’s like a full time job not to kill niggaz,
can’t chill
/
the streets is watching you, when you froze your arms
⁵
/ Niggaz wanna test you and your gun goes warm
⁶
/
Can’t get caught with your feet up, gotta keep your heat up
/ Sweet niggaz running ’round swearing shit is sweeter
⁷
/ Once you’re tagged lame the game is follow the leader
⁸
/ Everybody want a piece of your scrilla, so you gotta keep it realer / Kidnap niggaz wanna steal ya /
Broke niggaz want no cash, they just wanna kill ya / for the name,
⁹
niggaz don’t know the rules / Disrespectin the game, want you to blow your cool / Force your hand, of course that man’s plottin / Smarten up, the streets is watching, it’s on / [
Chorus
]
My street mentality flip bricks forever,
¹⁰
know me and money / we like armed co-defendants, nigga we stick together / Shit whatever for this cheddar ran my game into the ground / Hustle harder until indictment time came around / Now you can look up and down the streets and I can’t be found / Put in twenty-four-hour shifts but, that ain’t me now / Got a face too easy to trace, niggaz mouths got slow leaks / Had to hire a team of workers, couldn’t play those streets / Stay out in space like Mercury, you jerkin me? Hectic / Had to call upon my wolves to send niggaz the message / I said this: “Let’s play fair and we can stay here / I’m trying to transform you Boyz II Men like daycare” /
Hey there’s money to be made and niggaz got the picture / Stopped playing with my paper and we got richer
¹¹
/ Then hard times fell upon us, half of my staff /
had warrants, the other half, in the casket lay dormant
¹²
/ I felt like life was cheating me, for the first time / in my life I was getting money but it was like my conscience was eating me /
Was this a lesson God teaching me? Was he saying that?
¹³
/ I’m playing the game straight from Hell from which few came back / like bad coke, pimp or die, was my mindframe back / When niggaz thinkin simplify I was turning cocaine crack? / Ain’t a whole lot of brain to that, just trying to maintain a stack / and not collide like two trains that’s on the same track / But I get my life together like the oils I bring back / In the bottom of the pot when the water gets hot /
Got my transporter take it ’cross the border then stop
¹⁴
/ Set up shop with a quarter of rock, here’s the plan / For three straight weeks, niggaz slaughtered the block / But you know the game is cruel, fucked up me and my dudes / One drought can wipe a nigga out, faster than the cops / and this unstable way of living just had to stop /
Half of my niggaz got time, we done real things
¹⁵
/ By ninety-four became the subject of half of y’all niggaz rhymes /
Public apologies to the families of those caught up in my shit
¹⁶
/ But that’s the life for us lost souls brought up in this shit / The life and times of a nigga’s mind, excited with crime / And the lavish luxuries that just excited my mind / I figured, “Shit why risk myself I just write it in rhymes /
And let you feel me, and if you don’t like it then fine”
¹⁷
/ The mindstate of a nigga who boosted the crime rate / so high in one city they send National Guards to get me / Ya dig?

M
y parents were into every kind of music, including early rap—I remember them playing songs like “King Tim III” by the Fatback Band and, of course, “Rapper’s Delight,” the first rap song to really break out nationally—and internationally. But while millions of people loved it, including nine-year-old me, it drove the serious rappers of 1979 absolutely crazy.

Rappers had been growing their art for years before this so-called “first rap song” appeared. MCs were tight when they heard it, not just because the lyrics were lightweight, but because the MCs on the record were considered to be wack no-names. Whole chunks of the song were completely bitten: Big Bank Hank not only stole Grandmaster Caz’s lyrics for his part in the song, he didn’t even bother to change the part where he spells out his name:
Check it out I’m the c-a-s-a-n the –o-v-a …

But it was a major hit and it created the first real crossroads in the story of hip-hop. Some rappers got angry about the commercializing of their culture. Other people saw it as an opportunity: If a group like the Sugar Hill Gang could have a hit, then that meant that there was a real audience out there for hip-hop. Russell Simmons was in a club with some of the pioneers of hip-hop when he first heard “Rapper’s Delight” and, like them, was surprised that the first hip-hop hit came from a group of outsiders. But he did his homework on it and went gold with Kurtis Blow, formed Run-DMC, managed the Fat Boys and Whodini, and launched Def Jam, dominating hip-hop for the next two decades. A lot of other people in that room that night never got paid for the art form they helped invent and are still nursing a grudge against the people who did.