Hip-Hop References that fly over your Head

luka

Well-known member
for the non-americans probably
'breaking the facts of life down like Tooti' (Toodi?)
whats that mean?

from canibus-buckingham place
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
various wu tang (raekwon esp) lyrics. no idea what the chef is chatting about half the time tbh, it just sounds brilliant.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
various wu tang (raekwon esp) lyrics. no idea what the chef is chatting about half the time tbh, it just sounds brilliant.

the Wu practically has their own separate dialect. I'm sure it's all explained in one of RZA's Wu manuals somewhere. there's all these different elements to it; the 5%er jargon, all the kung fu & mafia speak, the aliases, the NY street slang, the place names (i.e. New Jerusalem=New Jersey, Shaolin-Staten Island & there's like 3-4 names for Brooklyn). plus whatever random neologisms, non sequiturs, etc. they want to toss in, Rae's really big on that, Ghost even moreso - I reckon he's #2 in that dept after Wiley. other dudes focus on other stuff - RZA is really heavy w/the 5% business.

one that always used to kill me was Cannibal Ox, until I found out that ox is slang for razor blade.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
vordul from can ox is a bit like the wu/raekwon yeah, vast aire always use to bug me a bit with his smugness/dependence on delaying punchlines cos he thought they were more complex than they really were (jay-z does a variation of this trick too).
 

Client Eastwood

Well-known member
Having seen The Message question thread reminded me of this . . .

"Me on king kong standin on my back
Cant stop to turn around, broke my sacroiliac"

tooks me a very long time to work out what he was on about. Pre internet dark days. And the lyrics for this never appeared in Smash hits.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
is that just a case of rappers making up words or adapting existing ones. did he just mean sack, as in nutsack?
 

Client Eastwood

Well-known member
sacroiliac

yeah what is one of those?

I had to look it up but its a

"The sacroiliac joint or SI joint is the joint between the sacrum, at the base of the spine and the ilium of the pelvis, which are joined by ligaments. It is a strong, weightbearing synovial joint with irregular elevations and depressions that produce interlocking of the two bones. The human body has two sacroiliac joints: a left and a right joint that often match individually but are highly variable from person to person"

from wikipedia
 
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ether

Well-known member
I noticed after watching the wire, i've understood alot more of the old rap slang which completely went over my head at the time. particularly alot of the drug stuff which is pretty cryptic.
 

ether

Well-known member
which reminds me...

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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I noticed after watching the wire, i've understood alot more of the old rap slang which completely went over my head at the time. particularly alot of the drug stuff which is pretty cryptic.

But pity non-British people (non-London?) trying to understand grime, too.
 
But pity non-British people (non-London?) trying to understand grime, too.

Yeah, there was no chance whatsoever of me working out what crepes meant, other than assuming it was pancakes. And what the fuck is 'alizade'. Or something like that. I think I've heard references to it being smoked (spliff?), drunk (mispronounciation of hennessy?), and also, 'bust your heard like alizade' (named after a boxer apparrently).
 
Yeah, there was no chance whatsoever of me working out what crepes meant, other than assuming it was pancakes. And what the fuck is 'alizade'. Or something like that. I think I've heard references to it being smoked (spliff?), drunk (mispronounciation of hennessy?), and also, 'bust your heard like alizade' (named after a boxer apparrently).

It's Alize

alize.gif
 
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