In the fashion of the translation of One More Chance*, this is a translation of Looking Down the Barrel.**
I am growing in both popularity and prowess in the same fashion and with the same speed as a snowball becoming an avalanche, and as explosive as gunfire, which I will now recount from the moment of pulling the trigger until the point at which the bullet escapes a gun. On the topic of lethal violence, I remember watching a stabbing victim bleed out. The number of times the victim was stabbed is comparable to the number of times a particular DJ from the early 1980s would rhythmically scratch his records during a show.
I am comparing my chronological age to the size of a bullet in my shotgun, and in what will become one of two recurring themes throughout this piece – anger and firearms – I will remind you that the lyrics of this prewritten rhyme are motivated by anger. This anger may have as its current origin the unreliable nature of the last vehicle I stole.
Three of us are smoking a marijuana cigar while I employ an old folk remedy to assuage cranial bruising, as I have recently been involved in a physical altercation. Just as with these two events, life can be both good (e.g., ingesting narcotics) and bad (physical altercations), and this duality is inextricable from our existence. Purchasing items from unknown or disreputable vendors will lead to your losing money on substandard products. Oh, and you shouldn’t attempt to express yourself the way I am currently doing.
(ohai i am robbing you now)
Returning to both my favorite themes, I start with violence: I note that the color of a particular brand of fortified wine is the same as the color often associated with anger in American and European cultures. Moving back to guns: my automatic weapons consume more ammunition than can be seen in an old Sylvester Stallone gun-porn action film, and I myself will be as difficult to kill as the lead character in an action film that was current at the time the rhyme was written but is now so old that the star of that film, now a septuagenarian, still had all his hair when it was filmed.
I appreciate females, but specifically in a sexually active and objectified way. I acquire sexual partners not through my own devices, but through the efforts of my acquaintance, who is a broker of female sexual partners. You may infer that this is a service he performs for money. That which I do is inevitable, and you are soon to fall in line with my wishes.
I will rob, brutalize, rape, and pillage this town at will, the way the main character of a notorious dystopian novel did with his associates in the early (and final) chapters of a famous Anthony Burgess book. To continue with that comparison, I am the ringleader of a group of like-minded individuals who are perpetually ready for violence, and am prepared to direct that violence towards anyone, including those listening to these lyrics. Finally, to return to my favorite theme, I am writing these lyrics in a state not only of anger, but of poor mental health.
For your part, I accuse you of being not only without guile or direction, but with a visage that attracts violence, and also I believe you lack the self-preservation skills to prevent that violence. The only positive note on which I can end this stream of puerile, misogynistic, and aggravated word association is directed towards gangbangers and general miscreants: racism is bad, and will tear apart a society.
* I have severe problems with that translation “being an assignment for an Oakland high school”. Lots of bullshit of many different detestable flavors involved there, which is why I linked to the Snopes article.
** If you can’t tell, I really, really, fucking hate this track. I am a confirmed Beastie Boys fan, their work is outstanding, they got paid for this joint, but fuckin’ell do I ever despise this type of lyricism.
Moth to the Flame 