Shoot Me Down (2008)
Get my towel
Now if you let me
You won't regret me
Shit if you let me
You wont forget me
Remember? And if you don't then ponder
Hold up - pow pow - there's a reminder
I ain't kinda hot, I'm sauna
I sweat money, and the bank is my shower
And that pistol is my towel
So stop sweatin me coward
This song allowed me to associate drinking hot tea with gangster shit, and for that I'll be forever grateful. I was also about a decade late to the party when I first heard it, but it had me hooked from the first listen, and helped me understand Wayne's perspective quite a bit.
At the time, I saw the first few lines as a mix between a dare and a promise. It also felt like he was speaking directly to me because I was still in the early stages of giving him my attention. These days, I can only look at it as a prophecy fulfilled, and I would bet this effect is multiplied many times over for the people who've been following from the beginning.
The second half is kind of a different story entirely. At first it was one of those things where I was listening but struggling to follow. Clearly the man was stacking metaphors on metaphors, but it took a while to parse it out and make sense of it all. To be honest, I'm still not sure if I've gotten to the bottom of it. Does he shower with bank money to clean off the money he sweats? Gotta be something like that. Anyway, if the story about how he recorded the song is true, he must have been on another level at the time, and maybe that means it'll take me some more time before I see exactly what he saw in there.