Alright i’m in the mood to review something, and this song came to mind, I mentioned this on the what song are you listening to thread, this cover isn’t horrible, clearly a lot of love went into it, and it is just different enough from the original to stand out. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut, it’s still not optimal, so here’s a breakdown.

Okay, first off, lets address what the song needs to do, the original is an absolute classic, it was almost shocking in a way and really stood out from the other songs, the reason it stood out this way was because it took the exact same lifestyle they bragged about in their other songs and showed what felt like a dark reality to it, focusing on the paranoia of living such a dangerous life. So the tone of the song is extremely melancholy, and dead serious. 

The song opens with an homage to the original, singing the intro of Night of the Axe instead of Mind of a Lunatic, this works pretty well because, just like the original, it sets the tone as separate from the violent songs. But there is a problem here, the Geto Boys focused on the repercussions of the criminal life style, so what does ICP rap about? There isn’t something clearly set up here, which ends up being a problem in the song, its never made clear why J is so paranoid, what made him that way, I think the best way to go about it would be the paranoia of a man who got away with murder, or they can go all out and just make him a serial killer, as it stands there is no clear reason why his problems are what they are. 

This problem continues into the second verse with Shaggy, specifically the first line about faygos and fucking fat bitches, the original line talked about his expensive cars and money, it was an obvious reference to the money he was getting as a big time gang member. But, yet again, the things that Shaggy is doing seem unclear, I think it would be most intuitive for him to be notorious for violence, he calls himself a dark carnival star, it’d be nice if he made it more clear what he means in the context of this particular song, using a smart choice of words in the beginning of the verse, it would also fit the rest of the verse as well, otherwise that verse is more or less fine, nothing really wrong with it. Other than I guess the “Whoo” was a bit out of place.

But, before it suffocates me, I have to talk about what is easily the worst thing in the entire song, Lil fucking Wyte’s verse, it makes it hard to listen to, despite the other verses being mostly decent, his just destroys the subtly and melancholy of the original. Even the beginning of his verse is already a travesty, giving a rapper call out excitedly, this DOES NOT BELONG in a sad contemplative song, it is a horrible way to start, and unfortunately it foreshadows his entire verse, he’s not being sad and contemplative, he’s doing a usual flexing shtick. Anyways on to the verse.

To start with, his voice, he raps it the same way, say, twiztid would rap an aggro ass line about killing someone, but, as mentioned before, this song is literally meant to be the opposite of that. So already, even if the lyrics were good, that would be a bit distracting, but no, the lyrics are a travesty. The original verse is about his depression, it is literally the saddest verse in the whole song, he talks about how he wants to kill himself but doesn’t want to hurt his son, that already is a huge statement, however Wyte kind of uses this, but he fucks it up, instead of focusing on how he wants to kill himself, he has a line about drunk driving, naming vehicular homicide instead of naming suicide, he still does make a reference to dying and how it would effect his children, but its not the focus of his verse, this already makes it a shit ton weaker, but the next part is what kills the song, the original verse continued on to show his regret as to how he treated the mother of his child, saying that to him she was “just another bitch” as I mentioned before this song shows the consequences of the life they rap about, so this really resonates, because despite the mentality of treating her like a “bitch” he finds that he falls in love with her, the way he was treating her has backfired and left him empty and depressed, its an amazing verse, Wyte got this shockingly backwards, instead of talking about how regretful he is that he mistreated her. He decides to make the 12 year old’s version of the verse and put all the blame on her, that already ruins the original intent of the verse, and is infinity weaker because it doesn’t feel nearly as real or painful as the original. And then the fucking nail in the coffin, changing the line to her being at fault is bad enough already, but apparently Wyte just fucking forgot that his verse is supposed to be about depression, and ends with “I got a new bad bitch homie” that betrays EVERYTHING the song stands for, the song is about the consequences of what they normally rap about, but instead he decided to have a line just like any other stupid song. Holy fuck, not only was it not tragic at all, but he ruined the entire tone of the song, fuck this guy, seriously. 

In order to fix this bastardization of a classic verse, I’d look at the first line, which almost seems like it could go somewhere clever, that would be similar to the original while still being its own, he says “that’s because I’m the one doing the dope” meanwhile the original is “I feel like I’m the one doing the dope” so this takes an element of the original and expands on it (or rather should have) so, now, instead of the verse being about how he mistreated someone, it could be about how drugs ruined his relationship with her and their kids. That could have been really clever, it would fit the tone flawlessly, bearing in mind that compared to the Geto Boys, this cast talks about taking drugs even more, the verse should have focused on this element, gotten rid of that horrible name shout out in the beginning, had a more subtle delivery, and most importantly, not end on that horrific last line, the verse shouldn’t be about him hating her, but him hating himself, and it shouldn’t end with him replacing her, it should just end with him being depressed he lost her. I can’t believe they got that verse so wrong. 

Holy shit I went on forever tldr: Wytes verse was garbage, he should have focused on regret and not blaming someone else, he needed to end on a melancholy note not a positive one, and he needed to have a subtle delivery, he fucked up the song.

Finally ABK’s verse, honestly, this one is fine, it’s pretty equivalent to the original, and honestly, might be better than the original verse just because the original verse’s setup is so fucking weird, saying that he’s robbing little kids, in ABK’s verse it makes sense because he says their robbing “richie kids” something that seems normal among this cast. 

So yeah, in general, they needed to completely re-work Wyte’s line, and they needed to show what everything was a result of so that there’s some weight to the song. 

So yeah, that’s my breakdown of this song, it was ballsy of them to make in general, but I think it could have been a lot better. And that’s how I’d fix it.