The ten best hip-hop lyrics of 2012
6. "Terrorist Threats" - Ab-Soul
"Peep the concept:
You've got progress; You've got congress;
We protest in hopes they confess;
Just proceed on your conquest."
In these lines, Ab-Soul sets up a tension between the words "pro" and "con," and uses their connotations to inform the meaning of the words that use these two opposites as prefixes. First, he juxtaposes progress and congress as polar opposites. Then, he introduces a mediating factor, the "we," which assumes the positive role by using to prefix "pro" in their "protest," in hopes that the government will confess its ills. The last line is ambiguous, as it could apply to either the protesters or the government, and the "pro" and "con" labels don't obviously apply to either, confusing the whole issue.
5. "Sorry" - T.I. featuring Andre 3000
"And this that shit that'll make you call your baby mama
when you gone on half a pill -- don't know why but that's how it is.
Then you take a flight back to the crib, y'all make love like college kids,
and you say all the shit you gon' do better. We can try this shit again.
'Round the time the dope wear off, you feel stupid, she feel lost.
That's that dope, I mean, I mean dopamine; you think Cupid done worn off."
If sex is a drug, then that drug is Ecstasy, and there's a thin line between love and sexual fixation. The subject of Andre's story falls on the wrong side of that line when, misguided by this presumably figurative drug (it would take some powerful dope to last through a plane ride), he believes he is still in love with his ex. In a more sober state, though, both he and his ex realize that they did not fall back in love after all; they were tricked by their own intoxicating hormones.
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