“Talkin’ bout ‘rhyme for me, L.’ Man, fuck rhymin’, cos my dick is hard enough to cut diamonds.” Clinic (Shoulda Worn a Rubber)

The diamond is commonly known one of the hardest materials on earth found in any natural deposits. I think lately people have engineered or found stuff that’s harder, but for argument’s sake let’s say the ‘diamond’ is the hardest material known to man. Big L is experiencing such a heightened state of arousal that his cock is now hard enough to cut through the hardest material known to man. Unbeknownst to the listener is whether L himself ever used said member to copulate with the pursued female partner, Joelle, earlier in the storyline. If he did, she almost certainly suffered terrible wounds and lacerations and has since been rendered unable to conceive, let alone experience a true orgasm. It truly makes one wonder about how far rappers are pushed to perform sexually by fans and “groupies” and whether L’s insatiable demon peen didn’t in some way lead to his demise. (He was shot, right? Maybe his diamond-esque sword in some way became magnetic to bullets? One can never be certain about these things.)

P.S. Big L does not want to “rhyme” for Joelle because unfortunately he’s become terribly preoccupied by anything but sex and hence will not be able to do or think about anything but until satisfaction has been reached.

“I knocked the boots from New York to Santa Fe, and that bitch burnt me like a gamma ray.” Same song, later on.

Now here L has set aside his scruples and become cantankerous in the face of a sexually transmitted disease, and though his previous chivalry has put him into this situation with Joelle, it’s now been cast aside in disgust due to that pesky predator, “Gonorrhea.” However, it seems prudent to note L’s ability to boast about knocking “the boots from New York to Santa Fe,” and admit with full candor in the following stanza that he was “burnt like a gamma ray.” Such emotional honesty balanced against stoic egotism has assuredly not been felt since Norman Mailer’s Advertisements For Myself and here we not only have the author’s pants down showcasing his manhood in all its infected glory, we have a protagonist so afflicted by circumstance that the only response he can summon up is a quick, Shakespearean revenge plot. L asserts, “Yo I’mma kill that bitch, next time that I see her,” and it’s not since the Bard that two star-crossed lovers were faced with such unfortunate miseries.

“Fuck around you’ll find my silk boxers in your mother’s hamper.”
Big L & Jay Z Freestyle

Here we return to the themes of old in which the young, spry Big L feels certain that if anyone should have the gall to challenge him or affront his person in anyway, he’ll bed their mother almost instantly. So instantly, in fact, that the proverbial you—a young man equally spry though perhaps not quite as sharp, and what’s more you often dig through your mother’s hamper (?)—will soon find L’s “silk boxers in your mother’s hamper.” This is the ultimate revenge story because the tragedy for the victim occurs long after the fact. Will you walk in on L with his hands cascading anxiously over your mother’s supple flesh? Will you see them at Denny’s late one night after seeing Liam Neeson’s newest picture? No. You will be left to stew in ignorance and curiosity as to whether these boxers, silken and inscribed with the man’s name, could possibly have reached your mother’s hamper through the depraved acts of which you dare not speak.

“Fuck love, all I got for hoes is hard dick and bubblegum.”
Same song, later on.

Now I might be ambling a bit outside my comfort zone intellectually as interpreter of L’s work, but this line I think showcases his general displeasure with such concepts as “commitment,” or “true love,” and in sincere aversion to these principles he’d rather remain either entirely sexual with his female acquaintances—hence, his “hard dick,”—or he can only be expected to give them less than a pittance, i.e. “bubblegum.” However, there are two interpretations that arise when considering this stanza, the first I’ve just told you, the second is that the bubblegum follows some sexual act and serves rather as a swift kick out the door more than anything else.

“Claimin’ she’s pregnant with my child, I think that’s quite foul, how was that I wore a Lifestyle?” Games Females Play

An unfortunate symptom of L being a child of years ago when one might not have been fully cognizant of the fact that condoms—“Lifestyle”—aren’t always 100% accurate, or something deeper? The easy way out would be to assume L’s ignorance and yet we’ve heard him in other songs explain very intricate scenarios involving murder—see, “The Heist,” for instance—or police chases and dice games—see, “Casualties of a Dice Game,” for instance—and hence to let it slide that he wasn’t certain his boys could swim through that thin veneer of latex seems not only a slight to the male genus in general but a slight against L’s intelligence and though we’ve seen him succumb to depression before—the angry verses of “All Black,” or “Da Graveyard,” can very easily be seen as an outward projection of some inner turmoil so scathing it only makes sense for the author to process it with aggression.

“Me bein’ a virgin, that’s idiotic, cos if Big L got the AIDS every cutie in the city got it.” All Black

Oh L, my dear, sweet, Oedipal L. We’re now watching Big L attempt to walk down every street in New York City and sleep with every woman who crosses his path, those he cannot sleep with, he spits upon or shares needles with. This is a difficult practice and although for a time it looks like he might succeed in the end he fails; not from AIDS taking him down, mind you, but from getting shot. I seem to remember a recent quibble tweeted by Bret Easton Ellis regarding David Foster Wallace’s similar nihilistic views regarding the disease.  It would make good sense that all three artists are/were fans of one another, or hated one another, or loved one another, or spent one night together and it didn’t pan out. Either way, L’s sexual mastery is such that not only will AIDS not thwart his endeavors to bed all of NYC’s women, it will inspire him all the more to lie with “every cutie.”

“And when it comes to getting’ nookie I’m not a rookie. I’ve got girls that make that chick Toni Braxton look like Whoopi.” Put it On

I’m fairly certain that were this analysis to come even one week later this line would prove inconceivable for lack of memory as to how awe-inspiring Toni Braxton truly is. What L’s asserting here is that he has “girls,” not just one girl, mind you, that would trounce the beauty of Toni Braxton so entirely as to set her next to that sexless amalgam, Whoopi Goldberg. It’s a common technique in casting aspersions on one’s fellows to say things along the lines of, “I’ve got such and such that’ll make you wish you’d never been born,” etc., but never has a person so clearly defined the parameters of his sexuality in such an effective manner. Pop cultural relevance aside, L has here cemented himself as the—now deceased—vanguard of challenging sexual themes in hip hop culture, and will likely never be ousted from that throne.

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Grant Maierhofer is writes a weekly column for Delphian Inc. entitled A Cabana of the Mind, he blogs at GrantMaierhofer.Org and lives in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin.