The first step I take when faced with this conundrum, is to look up the lyrics online. I need to be 100% sure of what I'm hearing, even in the cases where the words appear clear, even if the meaning is not. I favor metrolyrics.com, but I recommend looking at 2 or 3 different websites to make sure you have the correct text. AtoZlyrics.com is also decent, but really, unless the actual artist has a website that includes song lyrics, you can never be absolutely sure how accurate what you're reading actually is. So, the best way to come as close as possible to 100% accuracy is to use several sources and compare/go with consensus.
Ok, so now you have the words. If this is all you needed, congrats, you're done. Many times, though, you will look for lyrics hoping to find out that you were mishearing something, and that your confusion will be healed when the true verse is discovered, but it actually was what you thought you heard, and that word/phrase/whatever makes no damn sense. You now have more research to do.
I guess it's time for me to relate this to a real-life example. You know that song "Bedrock"
? Well, I didn't understand why some guy was randomly saying what I was positive I was hearing to be "grocery bag." He is. I had myself convinced that when I looked up the lyrics, if he was in fact saying "grocery bag," it must be a new phrase to mean that you've got something in the bag. With this particular example, I thought I had solved the crime before doing the research! Bold!A lot of times when this song-lyric-confusion thing happens to me, the song in question is a rap song that I hear on the radio a lot on my way to/from work. I'm not bold enough to think I know what most lyrics in rap songs mean, but if I'm hearing a confusing lyric often, it will get into my brain and drive me nuts until I have answers, dammit! This "Bedrock" one was grating me because I hear it at least once a day, and it's a pop song really, anyways. I shouldn't have to feel so intimidated by this ridiculous song! I know what it means when the girl says "you're pressing me like button downs on a Friday Night" and I know what it means when Drake aka Jimmy Brooks says "I love your sushi roll, hotter than wasabi." When the day comes that Jimmy Brooks is rapping above my head, I will just enter the nursing home of my free will. ANYWAYS, this is all leading to the point when I tell you that the next step is one of my most favorite discoveries of the last ten years... URBANDICTIONARY.COM.
I've looked up many terms from rap songs and black comedians on this amazing website. And the definitions - usually several for each term you look up - rarely fail to be hilarious. Like most words on there, the definitions for "grocery bag" vary from "it means nothing" to "what a poor guy uses for a condom" and more, but there is at least one on there that goes along with my prediction of what it means, which makes me feel like I'm getting so good at my research that I'm basically an "urban slang scholar." It seems like most of the people writing the definitions for "grocery bag" are defining it and meaningless nonsense, which sort of makes me feel like this endeavor was pointless. But, I can't feel like any time spent on urbandictionary.com is a waste. The following is my Top Five Favorite Things I've Looked Up on Urban Dictionary:
1. Pigeon (prob the first thing I ever looked up)
2. Jump Off (like a week ago)
3. Baby Daddy (6 pages of awesome)
4. Nephew (educational)
5. Chickenhead (immediately after the Chappelle's Show episode that gave so many definitions... I needed more, I guess)
This website is not just for when you're confused, people. It's also for when you're bored, or when you feel like something might be a slang term, but you're just not sure and it would be embarrassing to ask a real person (if it IS, it is on there, for sure), or maybe you want to define something you feel everyone should know the REAL meaning of, and you are the expert (maybe you're inventing terms... which now that I think about it, I invent words all the time, why haven't I been recording them in the most important dictionary currently in existence (take that stupid, un-editable-ass Webster and stuck-up-ass Oxford)?? Sometimes my lack of initiative is so infuriating!)
By the way, Missy Elliot is up on my itunes
right now, and she never speaks nonsense! EVERYONE understands her beautiful figurative language... did "go downtown and eat it like a vulcher" send anyone into fits of research? Nope. Missy brings people together, whereas other rappers are always trying to make me feel like an outsider. Booooooooooooooooo
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