Foxy Brown: The First 48

Editor's note: Today's post is brought to you by official Tort Team member Ruff G. #Salute. However, I hate this topic so much that I have heavily edited it and threw in my own commentary (highlighted in red). Tort G. in the mix.

I am a big fan of Nas album "It Was Written...". Sure, it's no "Illmatic" but it's a strong album full of bangers. One of the bangingest of tracks on the album is Affermative Action, not only because it has one of the dopest beats of the album, but because it has solid lyrics from three of New York's finest MCs: Nas, AZ, and Cormega (it also has Foxy Brown, we'll get to her in a sec, k). Now, if you're not a fan of AZ or Cormega then go ahead and TAKE A HIKE they're both the best. I would hate to rap on a song with these three guys. It's like a death sentence. You're done. You're like a man with no arms (you can't hang). It would be like playing basketball against Jordan and two other Dream Teamers. You're going to lose. Foxy Brown lost.

Obviously Foxy was aware of who she was spitting with, so she decided to go the nonsense route and just say confusing numbers and mathematics in her verse. Like chess, with numbers. Now, I'm sure these numbers have been crunched by the world's greatest mathematicians, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't take a crack at them.  LET'S GO!

Editor's note: At this point our post becomes the borrrringest post imaginable just explaining math. DUMB. But I support our man Ruff G. even if this topic has been done to death. Word, okay so here are the lyrics (I should also point out that none of us has any experience with math, and a lot of us didn't even graduate from public school, STREETS)...

Here are Foxy's lines:

Thirty-two grams raw, chop it in half, get sixteen, double it times three
We got forty-eight, which mean a whole lot of cream
Divide the profit by four, subtract it by eight
We back to sixteen, now add the other two that 'Mega bringin through
So let's see, if we flip this other key
Then that's more for me, mad coke and mad leak
Plus a five hundred, cut in half is two-fifty
Now triple that times three, we got three quarters of another key
The Firm baby, volume one uhh..

Let's break out the lines by the numbers...

"32 Grams of Raw". That's our base number. Okay. 32.

"Chop it in half". 32 / 2 = 16. Easy, Now we have 16 Grams of Raw.

"Double it". Okay. 16 x 2 = 32. We're back where we started. 32.

"Times 3". 32 x 3 = 96. Fine. 96 grams of raw.

"We got 48". NOPE. Okay, somebody went wrong here. That's what Foxy says though. But the internet's answer to this is that the term "double it" is not literal, it just means "make a profit". Okay, so let's try that. Let's start over using that assumption:

"32 Grams of Raw". Our base number. 32.

"Chop it in half". 32 / 2 = 16. Done.

"Double it". We are skipping this on the grounds of slang. So we're still at 16.

"Times 3". 16 x 3 = 48. AH! We got it? 48?

"We got 48". Yes! Let's move on.

P.S. If "double it" is indeed slang, then could "chop it in half" be slang for "sell it"? I don't know.

Let's look at the next lines:

Divide the profit by four, subtract it by eight
We back to sixteen...

We have another problem. Foxy says that we divide the profit by 4, yet we don't know how much the profit is. Hmmm...BUT we can figure it out using reverse math*!!!
*Tort Team Exclusive Math™

So, if the answer is 16, and you get to that by subtracting 8, then the reverse math is this: 16+8, which equals 24.

Then if the profit was divided by 4 with a result of 24, then we need to multiply by four which gives us 96!

RRRRRRRTTTTT!!! (Car Breaks). Now wait just a damn minute. Doesn't that number look familiar? It's the number we came to earlier when we assumed that Foxy meant "double it" literally instead of as slang. Let me refresh your memory:

So that leads me to believe that the lyric is completely correct, the only problem is where Foxy says "we got 48". So just act like she doesn't say that and the problem is solved. Here is the Tort Team edit:

Thirty-two grams raw, chop it in half, get sixteen, double it times three
We got forty-eight, which mean a whole lot of cream
Divide the profit by four, subtract it by eight
We back to sixteen, now add the other two that 'Mega bringin through 

Perfect math! So this might not be an error but a mystery. The mystery of the extra 48. Maybe we should get OFWGKTA on this, they love a good mystery! Also, don't hire ANYONE from the Firm to do  your taxes.

Affirmative Action Score: 7/10

Points Lost By Foxy Brown: 2 

  

Editor's note: Who cares? So I think we can all agree that Foxy gets destroyed on the mic by all three of the other MCs. However, her verse is the one we're still talking about isnt' it. I think all of this calculating misses the point. Sure the verse is dumb and a waste of breath, but all she's saying is that they got a key, split it and sold it, made a healthy profit, and still had enough to purchase another key. Big deal. Dumb verse. Was anyone expecting a good and coherent verse from Foxy Brown, much less good math skills? You know, Firm Biz , so what the deal is?