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Song Stories

“Cold World”

GZA | 1995

From the Liquid Swords album, GZA's "Cold World" gives a poetic look into the gritty streets of the Brooklyn neighnorhoods of Brownsville and Red Hook. "A lot of dudes write these street tales and they're so gory, 'cause they think gory is visual," GZA said. "I wanted to write something and take it to a level where nobody's done it." Like many Wu classics from that era, the song was created in RZA's basement back on Staten Island. "I remember being there, and some of the beats were running for like two days nonstop. 'Cold World' was one of them."

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“Girlfriend”
Matthew Sweet | 1991
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“Mistadobalina”
Del the Funky Homosapien | 1991

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Song Stories

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The Joy Formidable | 2011

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”

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