An Unknown [Bronze/Kevlaar] Assortment of Broken Down Lyrics..
this thread is gonna be for ALL questions/comments/whatever on lyrics from Bronze Nazareth and Kevlaar 7---that AREN'T on the Wisemen Approaching or TGM albums because we already have threads for those (see below)---for instance anything from the Unknown album that was released last year, and any random tracks that are floating around that haven't been released on an official album....i'm sure u understand what i'm talking about so i won't go any further with that..
first off i just want to gather into here the links to a couple of random threads i made not too long ago breaking down Bronze verses, ONE of which didn't get the attention i thought it deserved and Bronze himself apparently never peaked at:
Bronze verse on Magnolia
Bronze on "Nothing to Hide"
Waters of Nazareth
and for reference purposes, here's the Lyric Interpretation threads for the two albums:
The Great Migration (one of my alltime favorite Corp threads)
Wisemen Approaching
to start off this thread, i'd like to take a look at each brother's verse on the song "Streets is My Home", (mp3 link) a banger produced by Kevlaar 7 which features a mad visual verse from K7 and a dope creative verse from Bronze..
once again, as a disclaimer--i usually get some shit wrong, whether it's the meanings or the words being spoken and this song has some seriously CRAZY metaphors so i could be way off at times....but it's my best attempt here so enjoy
Streets is My Home
Verse One
Kevlaar 7
Yo my blood is hazy, smokey glaze gaze in ways
eyelids (or 'dye lids') cook up my hybrid, I've witnessed every act of violence
immediately beginning with some dark visual shit, both emcees are gonna portray a picture of themselves as being on some real-deal STREET shit...'my blood is hazy' because he's taken so many substances--whether it's crack, weed, alcohol, and everything else---and obviously that shit is in your blood..
if the second line is "dye lids" then he's sayin he cooks up his 'hybrid' aka his mix of chemicals--cocaine, meth, whatever--in a little lid..
"i've witnessed every act of violence" is a dope line that serves to put the finishing touches (just within the first two lines) of the scene we find ourselves in....some street, grimey, villainous individuals
Silence is isolated, i'm in a crowded basement
sittin' adjacent cane vapors rainin', carbon faces
more great visual imagery, i take the second line to mean that there's all kinds of heavy smoke ('cane' is like a stick---so cigar, cigarette, blunt) floodin' this crowded basement...i love the picturesque 'carbon faces' line too
Decrepit humans sit in ruin, suicide's amazin
flagrant patients inhale an icy danish, painted
Delta 88, i sit inside the pipe and wait for fate to overcome it's niggaz who can't even see the sun
Delta-88 is an Oldsmobile car (pic), "sit inside the pipe" probably just means he's smokin that crack pipe and just lettin' time pass, waitin for "fate"--death--to overcome those decrepit cats who are trapped in prisons, and thus can't see the sun
I circulate around it
display scenes surrounded
by shadows and gallows, my smoke is not a trail to follow
Survival is vital, smoke billows out the rivals window
now the tone changes a little i think, we're kinda back to reality, back to Earth (circulating the sun) and Kevlaar is sayin how he paints these shadowy dark scenes but his "smoke is not a trail to follow"---just like 'i'm not a role model, i walk a hard road to follow'---cuz he's paintin' these scenes not STRICTLY from imagination but partly from experience..
Swindle vandals sellin' handfuls and halos
and ?rainbows? and Grey Goose, compliment me
Anything to gain those, baked-up cocaine dose intensely
the wordplay is crazy in this verse...he deals with street characters sellin drugs, alcohol and death just to gain enough to smoke some more of that intense crack..
I stole the moon leavin' you an empty eclipse
Ya brain rips a cavernous hole, occupyin ya soul
this last part i'm a little unsure of, i think Kevlaar is again coming out from behind the curtain and sayin how he just blew our minds with the crazy crackhead verse...i could be totally wrong
Signifyin' you dyin or ?signin'? kneading your dome
I'm the reason ya homies have to be speakin in codes
I explode outcomes, lungs and atoms are blown
same as previous comment
the Streets is My Home, cuz i need to be sold
this last line actually makes me re-think the entire verse....and if what i'm thinking is right, then it just makes the verse THAT MUCH MORE AWESOME: he could possibly be playin' the park of crack or cocaine or some other drug the whole time..
in other words, the entire verse might be from the perspective--NOT of the person taking the drugs--but of the drug itself...
i could be wrong but either way this is cool..
after Kev's verse there's a little clip discussing the 80s crack epidemic and how it "virtually devastated a generation"...a nice conclusion to the verse we just looked into...(and we'll see the same at the end of Bronze's verse)
next up is Bronze Nazareth, after Kevlaar has been wearing the mask of a crackhead (or crack rocks?) Bronze is now spittin' from the perspective of a bum on the streets...i freakin' LOVE this verse..
but again, there's alotta stuff that i'm not catching at all...
Verse Two
Bronze Nazareth
The park bench is my bed, breathe the dark stench of the lead--
these type of verses--from both cats---are so poetic to me...i can imagine ppl on stage wearin' the clothes of the part and speaking these lines in a theatre or something....
he's living in the city, outside on a bench sleepin every night and constantly breathin in the polluted city air
--in the city air, my 16th pair of donated shoes
the blow made me snooze, no dough for daily booze
i think 'the blow made me snooze' is a short line trying to sum up how his life got like this...
In God's Kitchen soup meals, who fields is dead?
^^this one escapes me for the most part...'God's Kitchen' might be a play on the NYC neighborhood Hell's Kitchen but it might also just be referring to the public kitchen thingys they have around the city for bums to come and have 'soup meals'....don't know what the second part means..[one site says the second part could be 'who feels he's dead?' and maybe it's like he's asking everyone in the soup kitchen]
Who real enough to sleep with cardboard over his head?
When it rains, i shower, the bottle's always my best friend
A life of lonely travels wherever i lay my hat
wherever the day be at, I always got darkened clouds--
describing the always hard life of a street bum..
--even when it's sunlight
My son might be graduatin', ain't seen him since '86 his Rick Russell alligators
are balanced on several layers,
amongst candles and prayers
the devil glares in my face in my night-mares!
he's a homeless guy who hasn't seen his son in years....he thinks his son is probably about the age where he would be graduating school and then the Rick Russell alligators part is confusing...
i think it's referring to a kind of shoe, and that "Bum Bronze" has saved his son's shoes and made a little sort of shrine with them along with candles and prayers next to his cardboard box that he lives in....once again, this could be completely (embarrassingly) off..
Remember facing M-16s for my nation's army
Now I'm facing the clerk, at the Salvation Army
he fought in war for the country, facing enemies guns but now he's got nothing--NO SUPPORT FROM THE COUNTRY HE DEFENDED---and he's at the Salvation Army tryin' to pick up clothes or whatever...
I asked God why I always had walked alone,
no answer so there's no heaven, the Streets is My Home
there's been a few times where Bronze has loosely referenced in his verses an old parable where a person has a dream in which they're walking on the beach next to God and viewing all the scenes from their life in the sky and then they look back and see sometimes there's only one set of footprints in the sand and it's cuz those were the hard times in life when God carried him...(Sinuhe's Impasse: "that one set of footprints, i probly DID walk alone")
it's a pretty deep parable i think and for me personally Bronze's outlook on it seems to hit ever deeper...in this situation, he's fictionally representing a homeless man who's had a life of hardships and realized he's been going at it alone the whole time and his frustrated response at the very end is that "there's no heaven!!"....i think it's a beautiful ending
Handle the mothafuckin Heights
a quick look at Bronze's verse on Handle the Heights off the new Almighty album Original S.I.N....
i'm doin this in the hopes that at some point Bronze can come on here and clear a few things up cuz there's definitely a few lines i'm unsure of here.....also, i'm gonna be goin over a few other songs from the Almighty album as well very soon..
Handle the Heights
[3rd verse]
Bronze Nazareth
I spit heat-searin', beat-clearin' shots at ya sternum
burn 'em and send Hallmark postcards to the sermon
crazy opening..he throws darts that are so powerful they're searin' from heat and their aimed right at the chest...where the heart is...then when the subject is dead, he'll send greeting cards to the sermon like everybody else..
Dirty vermin wit shiny crowns and the dirty gloves show me 30 rounds worth of love, bringin' in slugs
the kings of the underground syndicates, the head mobsters and criminals, all the 'vermin' show him love for his skills (which were described in the first two lines) by saluting him with rounds of gunshots..
I speak life sentences, trapped in the years
Words escape like inmates from trap between ears
"I speak life sentences" is probably my favorite line besides the final one....so many meanings to that one line..life sentences could mean he spits that real-life shit, the stuff we can all relate to as ppl---but its also like he speaks on the dark and tragic shit like cats being imprisoned for life..
second line is using the same imagery as the first, he's freeing these 'inmates' that were trapped inside his brain...the symmetry as well as imagery (and deeper meanings) between the two lines is crazy..
Practice crackin' sutures, pollution from mutual war
My thoughts on they theater shit like Lincoln on the fourth floor
this one I'm not too sure about at all, especially the second line..i don't even know whether or not I'm hearing it right...there's definitely some heavier meaning to it but it escapes me..
Keep the magnum P.I. on top of it, prophet
Detroit west burglars with murderous logic
pinpoint chest and vertebrae, get burnt through ya topic
Servin' multitudes of fraudulent emcees be the conquest
again i'm pretty stumped...:learning:
the last line is of course sayin that the main goal, the conquest, is to serve or bring it to all these frauds that are emceeing nowadays...but besides that I need this one to be elaborated on..
We send warning from gas, harass like mad snacks
when i heard the "snacks" line at first I didn't think i was hearing it right...unless it's "harass like mad snags" which i don't think it is....otherwise I guess its referring to a whole shitload of candybars and shit like that----hard to resist, but i dono about harassing..
We toast we crack glass, smoke hash
through Alaskan pipeline, recite grenades, Bronze sonic mind
Runnin' in front of the grim reaper I'm ahead of my time..
i love the imagery on "smoke hash through Alaskan pipeline" and then of course the final line is one of the best on the whole cd, an absolutely insane metaphor which I don't think even needs any kind of explanation..
Obviously there's alot in the verse I'm unsure of and i also get the feeling that there's somethin goin on with the whole verse that I'm not catching yet but....any suggestions from anyone would of course be welcome...this shit is ripe for interpretation.
Come to Life Faster (off the Almighty album)
a quick look at the joint Come to Life Faster off the Almighty album, Bronze's solo joint on there produced by Purpose...alotta ppl's favorite song on the album..
there's a bunch of lines and phrases that I don't get at all in this song but I'm pretty sure I've got the rest of it right..
(the lyrics are taken from those that DaSun typed up for Chambermusik, with just a couple corrections from me....)
I'm pretty sure the theme is a short life review/autobiography type of thing where Bronze is just very quickly and briefly taking u through his life and bringin it all back to right now..
Come to Life Faster (prod by Purpose)
[Bronze Nazareth]
Yo, born in the 12th month, angels felt cold huh?
Word to my old pop, keep venom like the cobra
born in the cold month of December, the angels delivering him must've been feeling that brisk Michigan weather...also could be looked at as like the angels were 'cold' in a bad way, making this baby have to begin his life in a freezing cold tundra type of environment..
for the second line.....i'm not too sure of the 'keep venom' line---the first thing that comes to mind is that he inherited his dad's temper, his "venom"....but it could also have a different connotation with the snake/venom image but I'll leave that one alone and let you use your imagination...
Grow wild in the open, to open bottles often
Drank my pain away it felt like coffins...
moving on thru his life, the first line brings the image of how plants or trees left alone in wilderness spread freely and "grow wild" but it's used to represent how young Bronze was let loose to grow up in the streets and get into some wild shit, drinking 40 oz bottles in the streets.....
and then using this habit to try to drown out his sorrows and stresses in life (a description i remember Nas using a bunch of times in the past) but doing so was killin him, the physical wear that heavy drinking has on the body (could also be a double meaning about holding up a coffin as a pall bearer, holding onto a bottle? i dono....maybe that's a reach)
Cement often...rose just to spite me,
reality hit hard like Ike T (??) [or Ice Tea?]
seems like the ground was rising up to trip him up along his journey at times...the second part I'm really unsure of...Reality hit hard is understandable but i dono who "Ike T" is...i was thinking it could also be either Ice Tea as in Long Island Ice Tea which is a drink that goes down smooth but then will hit you HARD when u realize how drunk you've gotten...or 'Ice-T' as in the reality show he used to have....i dono..
I'm on the porch sheisty,
blunted middle finger to the po-lice
black hoody, when times get ugly the street mad pretty
chillin up on the porch at a house party or wherever, blazin blunts and flailing the fuck-you at the cops.....last line is a nice one, trying to make some cash off the street life seems pretty tempting when the legit way ain't doing it for u...
Handle my city wit my palm, nigga I'm grown
"I gotta help keep the heat and the lights on"
now he's grown up, he's an adult and he's got to seriously handle his situation and support himself (and family)...
according to DaSun, the second line is quoting Cee-Lo of Goodie Mob on the song "Thought Process" and it's reiterating how he's at the stage now where he's gotta get his shit together and bring in some money to help pay the bills (this line really struck me personally when the song first dropped cuz I had just moved out to Cali and was gettin used to having my own apartment and having to put the gas and electricity on and start paying for that shit.....somethin new to me)
I'm flowin in but no money outta this microphone,
I recite a war poem while jumpin over obstacles
this is his chosen craft, he's an artist ('starving artist') trying to make his money this way, by rapping on mics but he's not seeing too much money out of it as an underground artist in an age where bullshit reigns on the surface...
i love the second line, referring to the verses as a 'war poem' reminds of Killarmy and he's hurdling over the obstacles in life at the same time as he writing and producing and rapping...
just these two short lines give a perfect picture of where B is coming from, putting his art out there to support himself but life is always throwing shit at you it seems...
Same stanza have a stranger strangled, vivid as Maya Angelou
Tangible rhyme animal, hungry to eat
I may not have the words right in the beginning but if it is it's got an obvious meaning and it's a dope one...he can come with that hard, angry rugged battle-rap type shit but also with vivid poetic beauty..
Released on furloughs (?) from my mind to follow God's feet
I'm gonna leave this one alone...someone else take a crack at it or else hopefully Bronze will explain some time..
I repeat like a broke record, habits that choke leopards
Lungs open like receivers, sung open wounds closed like them old voodoo healers
he's stays stuck in those same old habits (smokin weed, getting drunk, whatever) that can 'choke' (think of coughing) a leopard (a mad athletic animal that runs like crazy)...
I love the last part about the voodoo healers...you could look at it like "lungs open" is a double meaning for both blazing Ls (continuing from the first line) but also speaking/reciting lyrics and doing so he's letting off steam and stress in a positive way and healing his own open wounds in the process...
While my niggas slammed in mausoleums,
the nausea will keep you scratchin at the coffin tops
Causin' gusts of poisonous wind drafts that make the neighbors call the cops
my favorite lines of the whole song..
witnessing his brothers, good friends whatever being killed and then placed in caskets (a mausoleum is a big-ass cemetery monument) makes him sick to the point where he's tryin to dig them up outta the ground....
'gusts of poisonous wind drafts' is the deep, SCREAMS of sorrow from the heart at losing a close companion so early...
32 flavors I drop...at the speed of a feather
get ya shit broke like flower pots and Mayweather.....
He drops that colorful, flavorful artistic shit so smoothly and gracefully.....but what's great about this line to me (and this had to be unintentional) was the connection with the number 32...in James Joyce's book Ulysses (regarded as the greatest novel of the 20th century), the main character is constantly thinking throughout the book about the Law of Falling Bodies which is basically gravity (and it's got all kinds of deeper meanings in Joyce's work about the Fall of Man)----but he describes it as being 32 feet per second per second....he's constantly talking about that number 32 in that way...
second line is just like the sound waves might shatter your flower pot or blast you in the face like a Floyd Mayweather punch.....Mayweather is a famously awesome boxer who's from Bronze's hometown Grand Rapids ('Gun Rule') and then the song ends with Mayweather talking...