We at Rap Genius spent most of this week waiting with baited breath for Pusha T’s new mixtape (no, really, we had an office-wide countdown!), and were not at all disappointed. Somehow, though, we managed to find time to go through the rest of the week’s music as well. Good thing too, as there were a bunch of incredible non-Pusha tunes out there. Kweli packed us a bowl, Vast Aire beat up on record companies, Skyzoo gave us a geometry lesson, and Jon Connor read the Bible. Below, the lines of the week:
5. “I pack lyrical substance like bowls of kush into a vaporizer/And then I vaporize ya/My paper may surprise ya” — Talib Kweli, ‘Upper Echelon’ lyrics
It takes a lot, after years of listening to Cypress Hill, Snoop, Meth and Red, and their cohorts talk about getting blunted ad infinitum, for a weed pun to get on our radar. Kweli manages to do so with some great imagery and his “vaporizer”/”vaporize ya” wordplay. Also, the use of the word “paper” at the end, with its echoes of rolling papers, keeps the theme going.
4. “I throw garlic at A&Rs/I can get mad, turn green, and flip cars” — Vast Aire, ‘Monster’ lyrics
Ever since GZA painted them as mountain-climbing, guitar-strumming, out-of-touch losers in “Protect Ya Neck,” A&R people have been a rapper’s biggest enemy. In this rhyme, Vast literally paints them as vampires in a very subtle way. The Hulk reference doesn’t hurt, either…
3. “Blue bezel we both flexing/Big diamonds,we Bowflexing/Pitch dope, touch down/Both sports, I’m Bo Jackson” — Pusha T, ‘Trust You’ lyrics
A Bowflex reference and a Bo Jackson punchline right next to each other? No wonder we love Pusha so much! We could have picked any number of lyrics from Wrath of Caine to make our list, but chose this as a nod to our childhood love of the old “Bo Knows” commercials.
2. “It’s a sentence in every sentence/What God say about vengeance?/Well, I’ll tell you — it’s all mine/I was made in his image” — Jon Connor, ‘Triumph Freestyle’ lyrics
Connor puts his own spin on Romans 12:19 while simultaneously using one of our favorite tricks, the homophone. The Michigan fire-spitter continues to move higher and higher in our esteem with every passing moment.
1. “I’m in the same vision/They blind enough to let us/So if diamonds is forever/Then why not just chase prisms?” — Skyzoo, ‘Phone Calls’ lyrics
Um, did Sky just make a joke about apeirogonal prisms? Yes, yes he did. “Phone Call” simply blew us away, and this line is only one highlight among many.