E-40 – Bet You Didn’t Know 

People use phrases like spitting knowledge/dropping knowledge/dropping jewels or ‘putting us onto game’ pretty loosely these days when a rapper talks about any type of life advice or (usually) financial advice in a song i.e. someone like a Rick Ross talking about investing or stacking up for a rainy day etc. But E-40 takes it to a whole new level in ‘Bet You Didn’t Know’ because the ENTIRE SONG IS JUST E-40 DROPPING KNOWLEDGE.

After the first two points, I was kind of like ‘Alright, I see where this is going, it’s going to be a political/socially conscious song from E-40’ but then I did not see the third point coming at all ‘You can bring your own bottle of wine and pay the corkage fee in the restaurant. You can have your own wine locker and you don’t have to pay the corkage fee in the restaurant.’ Not what I was expecting but nonetheless helpful advice for those who don’t know. After that, E-40 really blindsides us by schooling us (in order) on some grammar, anatomy and the corporate structure of Volkswagen as the crowd behind him implores him to ‘Teach, teach, teach’ and encourages him to ‘Drop gems on them’ over and over again. From there, it’s a pretty wide-ranging cornucopia of topics, from the genuinely useful and insightful like helping your kids build their credit and quite a bit of health is wealth advice to less applicable in daily life such as ‘A maggot morphs into a fly, a caterpillar is a butterfly’. There’s quite a bit of animal talk (my favorite of which would have to be ‘A dolphin can beat a shark’) and religious musings. (By the way is it just me or does the ‘glass of wine a day keeps the heart attacks away’ sound like a credo you would see on like some wooden wall art from Walmart in a middle-aged woman’s kitchen? Then again based on the name of my site I guess who am I to judge).

The beat is actually fairly fire too. In short, 30 yeas into his career E-40 is still one of the most colorful and unpredictable characters in the rap game. Elsewhere on the album E-40 makes references to everything from Moses to Ashley Graham. There are quite a few highlights on Practice Makes Paper that I want to get to on here but I felt like I had no choice but to address this one first!