It's a trick I learned from all the greatest emcees: a "dumbed down" record actually forces you to be smarter, to balance art, craft, authenticity and accessibility. And then there are the bits of snap philosophy - Jesus can't save you, life starts when the church ends - and punch lines with new slang like n-, I be Spiked out, I could trip a referee. Even little s- - the Special Ed shout-out or the line about LeBron James and Dwayne Wade - forces you to keep listening beyond the "dumb" elements. And for the hip-hop heads who come looking for technique, it's got all kinds of sneaky Easter eggs if you're a close listener: the way I played with the flow on and in the winter gets cold in vogue with your skin out to also make it sound like a reference to Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue (which conjures the image of glossy fashion as a counterpoint to the literal meaning of the line) the way I turn the old cliché about New York being a "melting pot" into a fresh reference to the drug game the way I use the punchy sonic similarity between "bus trip," "bust out" and "bus route" to amplify a metaphor about getting sexually exploited.
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