After a few more listens and this time backwards, Im 90% sure Lupe wants us to listen to it both ways. The whole first verse on blurred hands is an instruction how to listen to the album I think.
Take time to learn me like court appointed attorneys -
It probably takes you a few listens get it that backwards is the more accurate way of playing the album.
Restore the order, we either join or adjourning- Restore the order.
Less you join I'm up performing the journey -
If you dont reverse the album it will probably go over your head. Since the album is a story/journey.
In all earnest, I go so Bernie -
Take the ending on earnest and bernie and flip them you get Bert and Earnie.
Takes another nikka to turn me -
Easy one.Turn me. It "takes another nikka". Since Lupe make the album this way you personally have to reverse it.
Get it straight, I ain't late on states
- Get it straight (Im pretty sure playing it backwards is the more accurate way of playing this album therefor it whould mean reversing the order is getting it straight.)
I'm just sternly stating
How what I do, with grace takes another nikka to turn mean
My return means like blockbuster with a tick
- My return. And like some other poster pointed out, The whole thing about reversing the VHS.
And I ain't kind but I don't hit
So you starting at the end, that's the part where you begin -
This sentence was the first thing that made me think the album is meant to be played backwards.
I skip the bullshyt so we can start it where we win
- Play the album front to back and it kind of ends tragically with Chopper, Deliver and at the end of Madonna you die. But if you play it backwards we end on a much better note. So this time "we win". I will show you how later in my post.
Yeah, spoiler alert- Lupe is having fun here, Since he have been so obvious he's calling himself out for offering so much guidance. The next verse he says "I match wig with wits". Meaning, he hides messages in complex metaphors but at the same time hes doing it using wit, often using cartoons and video games as references.
I can hear you all saying "boy you're a jerk"
But it's cool though, know we gotta rule yo
Get in, then we win and do it all again, ho- Talking about listening to the album again, but this time "get in"/joining him on the journey.
So this is my take on how the album plays backwards. You probably will get the story of the album in the regular order when you understand the story of the reverse order.
Spring - the season where everything comes to life.
TRON. Space (the beginning) and talk about proceeding to the next level. Lupe sounds sleepy just before his first verse. Like just waking up. AB-soul drops hits about reversing the album and also mentions trapped in the game where the trap is the game. From a Buddhist and Hindu way of thought, you are trapped in the karma circle (samsara). You will be resurrected/reincarnated until you becomes enlightened. Hindus think this is a game that Krsna (original god) have made up. So you are trapped in life. But its at the same time its life that is the game. If you have lived a good life you will be resurrected into a better life.
Magi (the baby). Talks about why you wanna keep this game up. Why you want to keep living in karma and not join god/nirvana. Its our sins that makes us believe that this world is real. The whole hook talks about it. The song ends with you are about to be born with the pregnant line.
Madonna (the mother). Since you lived your last life (the album being played from front to back) in sin you will be given a "starting environment" that is not that great. This song starts the portrayal of this environment with the focus on the mother (your womb).
Deliver (you are now born into this world).
Chopper. The song that brings us into winter. Talks more about the environment that you will grow up in. I believe that this section in Lupes verse is talking again about reversing the album and being reincarnated:
Excuse me, as I repeat myself
Work twice as hard to complete myself
My opposition is not pretending
When I work twice as hard to defeat myself
In this life he will work twice as hard to try to ignore the sins of this world and to complete himself (reach nirvana).
Winter. I have a harder time deciphering these songs since they are more complex. But i gave it a shot with the little clues we got from the other songs.
No Scratches. Many car metaphors. I see it as Lupe talking about the car as the body. The body is not our true self. Its just our earthly body made of matter. But our true body is god/nirvana.
Today not many take care of their bodies and are reckless. Which seams the meaning behind the song.
Little death.
Taken from Rapgenius:
-La petite mort, which is essentially “the little death” in French, although it serves as both an idiom and euphemism for orgasm.
Although generally referencing the spiritual release that follows an orgasm or period of melancholy or transcendence as a result as an expenditure of ones life force, it also references the feeling one has when something unfortunate or undesired has occurred to an individual to the point that said individual feels as though a small part of them has died.
Using sex as an escape in life will get you more enslaved into believing this earthly body is "real". There are many dualities in this song. Dualities are what makes up this world. Form/space, Love/hate, birth/death etc. Buddhists say Nirvana is the end of dualities.
Body of work. Again talking about the body. Hindus and Buddhists say its captivation of our senses that makes us sin. And its our body that makes us feel these senses.
Anatomy (skin), will be the death of me
Anatomy (skin), that's just my anatomy
Anatomy (skin), will be the death of me
Here Lupe points out what I have been talking about. That your anatomy/skin/body is just your earthly body. And when you are born into a body you have to die. That is the nature of the dualistic world. To have birth you have to have death.
Prisoner 1 & 2. Maybe the most complex song on the album after Mural. What makes me say this? It seams just like a straight forward song about a prisoner and a guard.
I dont claim to understand the song to its fullest and I could be reading to much into it. But since the rest of the songs are following a pattern I have tried to decipher it with this in mind.
Yes the song is about a prison and I think most agree that its told through the view of a prisoner and a guard.
But I also believe that its could be understood as a metaphor for being a prisoner of life.
Prisoner 1 is the person that have been resurrected/reincarnated. He is still a slave to his sins and it is his karma from his previous life that have gotten him imprisoned in these conditions. But he is now slowly starting to wake up and see what life really is. "He is looking for the lord".
Just before the verses of prisoner 2 starts there is a girl talking. One of the things she says is:
"...yet unborn he'll be captured by Maya, in a ruby-encrusted cage"
Maya is used in Hinduism as a term for illusion. Illusion that this life is "real", when reality is god/nirvana/truth.
The hook is playing with the Love/hate duality. Prisoner 1 is looking for Love, Prisoner 2 is blinded by hate. I think that the song can be looked as prisoner 1 is the focus on the reversed listen and prisoner 2 is the focus on the regular order of tracks.
I belive this sentence in the hook have a double meaning: I just wanna be collected when I call God damn.
The obvious one is the collect call from the prison, but I think its also about calling god.
the next sentence is: I don't wanna be accepted; not as all as I am.
Here you don't feel you are worth saving. A true enlightened person know that even karma and sin is an illusion. But as long as you wanna continue to play the game of life you will believe its true and therefor continue to be reincarnated.
Fall. Fall is when everything is dying. But when you know that death is just a part of the illusion be will become free and truly "live". AKA summer.
Dots and lines. A lot of references to sacred geometry. Which many claim is the mathematics, "building blocks" and true source of the universe. Would take to long to decipher and explain everything but the last sentence tells you what you need to know.
If your reflection is a mask, then you're reflective of mass
To see yourself just look at me then split your reflection in half
If your reflection is a mask then you still haven't realized that this is an illusion. You haven't taken of your mask. In Hinduism maya is sometimes explained as god playing hide and seak with himself. Being the actor and the audience at the same time. When you take of your mask you see that you was god all along. So as long as you don't let go of your belief in the illusion you will be caught in the karma circle and therefor be apart of the dualistic world. The world of space/form=mass.
When you realize you are part of the whole (god), you will see the whole (god) in others. There are no true separation.
Blur my hands. So we are back where it all began.
Now the title have a new meaning. When you are god realized and enlightened you see through the illusion. Everything gets "blurry" (including hands) since there are no separation "outside" the dualistic world. God is everything, everything is god.
The hook is some what about giving someone a finger but it also plays on this idea. Lupe is a god to Lupe stans. We can see that he is on another level and we put him on a pedestal. But Lupe is saying we also are gods since everything is eccentially god. We just dont see it. Number one being god. And everything is being part of that. Therefor you are number one too.
Verse one is explaining how to listen to the album, I think verse two also does this to some extent. While verse three is going back to the car/body metaphor.
Sitting in your car, just listening to the bars
And there's traffic all around and you feel like falling down
And the music that I'm spewing out, enough to calm him down
'Fore you know you watch your car with your briefcase walkin' round
A lost of references to the movie Falling down (a movie I love btw).
The section I'm quoting is about being caught up in the tribulations of life and you feel like giving up. But Lupe is comforting you and saying that you can become enlightened and step out of the body (The manifestation of the dualistic world).
Mural. To complex for me to decipher. But at the end of the song and when we are listening to the album in reverse also the end of the album, he says:
Simple as a Buddhist monk in a temple standing in some heel groove with the abbot, practising stillness
Real still til he realizes his realness
Defeat Samsara achieves nirvana and brilliance
Which ties everything all together. Ending on a positive note and going into the ever lasting summer of nirvana/god.
So this was my take on the album. Even if it feels like I could be reaching on some parts the over all theme can be found all over. I found something that looked like a red thread and to me it seamed to be popping up everywhere.
What do you guys think? Disagree? Found something that support this theory?
at Lu doing this. The goat.
