Rap Genius: The top 5 rap lyrics of the week — Pusha T reveals info about his early days
RAP GENIUS - This past week was a great one for new recordings -- unless your name was Mitt Romney...
This past week was a great one for new recordings — unless your name was Mitt Romney. Â For everyone but the Republican nominee, though, the past seven days were full of fantastic new music, only a portion of which we could feature here. Â Below, Chino XL pines for a fair and balanced press, Ghostface tells us how things really go down in his home borough, CyHi takes us for a fluid-filled ride in his car, Pusha reveals some interesting info about his career’s early days, and two-time LOTW winner Nino Bless makes a run at a third crown. Â Ladies and gentlemen (and Mitt), we give you the lines of the week.
5.  “This how we do it on Staten/We hardly get caught with our hoodies off, let alone a ratchet” — Ghostface, ‘Stick Em’ lyrics
Ghost brings his patented high-energy style to this collab with Sheek Louch and Jadakiss of D-Block. Â Here, he reps the readiness for war of his S.I. compatriots and leaves us with an image of a whole island full of hoodies — something we find unaccountably funny.
4.  “When you on the grind, be careful who you talk to/I’ve been grinding so long that I think my balls blue/Got a broad in my ‘lac, playing with her cat/I get her super wet — I call that a carpool” — CyHi the Prynce, ‘Funkmaster Flex Freestyle’ lyrics
We at RG have been known to have a third-grader’s taste for dirty jokes. Â Thus, the punchline about blue balls really made our day, as did the obvious-but-still-amusing “carpool” pun.
3.  “Got a love for hip-hop that could never be lost/Even if it ignores me like the media ignored slavery and Armenian holocaust” — Chino XL, ‘Eye (The Stomp)’ lyrics
Chino XL, as ever, proves to be an absolute beast of a rapper. Â It was extremely tough to choose just one rhyme from this song, which is filled with amazing imagery and rhymes dense enough to stop any fan of wordplay in their tracks. Â We especially appreciated the note of the early twentieth century Armenian genocide, a terrible and not-officially-acknowledged incident that the U.S. power structure only ever sees fit to bring up when it’s trying to score political points against Turkey.
2.  “Bought mama’s Jag in oh-one/The only hits I had then was a nose run/Dropped ‘Grindin”, let you hear just how the dope’s slung/Shot the video where I was buying my dope from” — Pusha T, ‘Favorite Rapper’ lyrics
Pusha here gives us a behind-the-scenes look at his early career. Â He lets us know that his hit “Grindin'” had a video that was shot in a real-life dope spot. Â We would be likely to think of this as just typical rapper bragging, if not for the whole his-former-manager-got-busted-for-running-a-coke-ring thing.
1. Â “I’m rushing to fame so I can palm Rihanna’s a**, ASAP/Rap Genius, there’s ya best line, take that” — Nino Bless, ‘Not Featuring 2 Chainz’ lyrics
The ’91-’93 Bulls, Â The ’00-’02 Lakers. Â Nino Bless. Â We have a new three-peater here at RG, as Nino takes the LOTW crown for an unprecedented third time with this joke about A$AP Rocky’s VMA stunt. Â Let it never be said that we’re immune to flattery!