Meanwhile, The Game starts off his first verse by alluding to his wealth, as manifest by the style of his whip. But the passage quickly turns into one centered on his, shall we say extremely-violent imagines. For instance, he touts the wherewithal to hire hitmen to kill the daughters of opps. And of course, that also means he can employ one to kill opps directly, a notion he also points to.īut the reason he is so is at least partially due to the violence that highlighted his youth, which is the next topic The Game harps on. For instance, his “lil nig-a Rob” was murdered for a pair of sneakers.Īccording to Genius, said event happened circa 1992, when The Game would have been just becoming a teenager. So if Rob was his “lil nig-a”, that means he was probably significantly younger than that.Īnd shortly thereafter, when someone else was making moves like he wanted to take The Game’s own kicks, the vocalist threatened to take the potential robber’s life. Or put differently, whether you hate him or love him, he’s still chillin’ nonetheless. And that is why 50 Cent is like “hate it or love it”. So as for those who “envy” him in the present, he’s content with that considering that he’s “rap’s MVP” and all.
Here, we get to know that it is centered on the narrator(s) celebrating now being “on top” after at one point rather being an “underdog”. And this is where the theme of the song first becomes blatantly expressed. The Theme of “Hate It or Love It”įollowing each verse comes the chorus. The vocalist then proceeds to express his disdain for the ‘hood. Even when he was a child, he wasn’t content growing up there. And the implied reasons would be because of financial difficulties and rampant crime.
Shortly thereafter, 50 Cent gives a roundabout shoutout to 1980s’ hip-hop artist Rakim, with Fiddy acknowledging The R as the “favorite rapper” of his youth. Then he introduces us to a concept which fans of rap music have become quite familiar with, and that was his decision to become a drug dealer in his youth in hopes of achieving bling status.Īnd concerning being able to bling, his grandmother promises to buy him “a sheepskin coat” if he does well in school. As a side note, in inner-city African-American youth cultures the type of coat one wears tends to be a major symbol of wealth. So now Fiddy is really scheming, knowing that the coat, along with additional funds generated via his illicit activities, will allow him to put together a more complete wardrobe. Simply put, the father was living the life of a career criminal, which is another way of basically saying that he was irresponsible. Indeed we can say that the inference of Fiddy referencing the absence of his dad thereafter would be that such was why his mom was compelled to behave in such a manner in the first place. And as far as to what his father was actually doing out and about, the vocalist concludes that he was most likely “out committing felonies”. This is something which, according to Fiddy, he actually saw. And the way it fits into the overall narrative is by serving as an illustration of the type of “confusion” he grew up with, being symbolic, in his eyes, of the “cold” environment of which he was raised. The first verse commences with the rapper, in this case 50 Cent, expressing that he witnessed his “mommy kissing a girl”.