There is a loud intro, one that goes 19 seconds before a abrupt break and suddenly it’s…

Rick Ross.

I never was a Rick Ross fan and this verse doesn’t do his justice. He has better tracks and better verses and I would hope that he does because it’s an absolutely uninspired intro that’s still just 30 seconds old.

I mention Ross because his name is listed as a featured guest. I have to imagine he was paid for this, although one could easily argue that he should pay West for catching whatever residuals and Ms. Minaj because she owns this track and everyone else is just leasing.

But that’s still another three minutes away.

The chorus is repeated twice and now Kayne throws out a ‘triple double no assist’ and the on top of this, throat mention and swallowship.

Jay inhabits the title of the song, listing all the creatures of the dark and fictional tropes before using this first pitch fastball to set up a few lines where the trope of the street life and hustling he’s returned to is transposed with that same existence for the monsters he’s already mentioned.

However deep I want to believe he may have gone, it’s ruined when he screeches the song to a halt by invoking the word

Love

Not getting enough of it may be true, but asking for it here seems, in retrospect, as if he was already willing to step aside and leave the beat alone for its true owner.

I’m old enough that while I still ‘listened’ to hip-hop in the early 21st century, it didn’t pay attention to it and missed the changes that take place in any musical format that stands the test of time.

Nicki was a large part of that change. I may be wrong, but this is the first time I truly paid attention to her and with good reason. She owns this beat as if she was with West when it was conceived, crafting her sound and style around the repetitive bass to perfection.

I could sell you a scene of the two of them hearing her own the beat and West recognizing the ideal way to play the cards in his favor. Instead of producing a single for her with the beat, he would save it for his album, giving it maximum push and reaping the benefit when Minaj hops on 3:35 seconds in.

3:35

That’s the length of many a song I could find and recite and I’m sure you can think of a few. In this song, I’ve already heard Kayne, Jay-Z, Rick Ross and the chorus twice. This song could be over.

Instead it’s just beginning.

The Willie Wonka reference rings in the ear, but ‘You can be the king, but watch the queen conquer’ is amazing and opening the gate to the line most likely remember from this track.

“First thing first, I’ll eat your brain.”

The timing of the line, laid solitaire on the beat, rings loud now as it did when I first heard it. It was always hard to pick the rest of the verse as one inevitably attempts to rap along. Good luck.

She’ll help you along while shouting out the next movement for the genre; the shoes that soon she’ll sponsor and show off on the runway and the crew that would be the start of the 21st century.

Young Money is the creation of Lil’ Wayne, who famously got robbed from writing credits on the first track I ever remember him from – Duffle Bag Boy.

Yes, they may have had some reunion/settlement or whatever at an award show years later. But in 2007, he wasn’t seeing money from that. Three years later, his record label is being shouted out by a young artist who is in the process of destroying three fully established hip hop stars.

Think Allen Iverson stepping over Tyrone Lue in the Finals.

“Let me get this straight. Wait, I’m the rookie, yet my feature and my show ten times your pay for a verse, no album out?”

It’s a braggadocios line, the type that have been said since Milk was chillin’; but…

With close to 90 seconds, mathematically she is on the majority of the track.

Lyrically, she bests three in the top 50, including two top 10s on her way to the title.

What more can I say?