It’s like bedtime without your PJs

Image: Annie Spratt via Unsplash

• Track: It’s Like That
• Artist: De La Soul feat. Carl Thomas
• Album: The Grind Date
• Year: 2004

If I’m going to catalogue every hip-hop simile ever, I’m going to have to get a wriggle on. In 2024, streaming services added an average of 99,000 new songs every day. That’s 36 million over the entire year. Even if only 10% of those were hip-hop, that means well over 4 million more hip-hop tracks exist compared to when I last posted. Oops.

But it’s been worth the wait, as (spoiler alert) this track goes to the top of the simile charts for at least one of our metrics. I know, I’m such a little tease. You could believe it took me over a year to analyse this one. As we’ll shortly discover, I’ve had more unpicking to do than the work experience kid on a pirate ship. (The knots and stuff.)

Those 4 million tracks will have to wait. IHHSDB rarely concerns itself with new music, preferring instead to keep its head firmly buried in the sand of old-school. The youngest track I’ve picked apart looking for simile morsels is now seven (2018’s Polka Dots). I do sometimes listen to more recent hip-hop, but maybe I should make more of an effort.

Anyway, we’re back in the golden era this time round, with a track that’s 21 this year. If this tune were a British human, it could adopt a child. Or get a minibus licence. But it’s not, it’s a song. And it’s from one of the all-time greats, the mighty De La Soul. This one’s off their seventh studio album, 2004’s The Grind Date, notable for being the group’s first album without skits (which I, for one, am grateful for). It divided critics. I think it’s ok, but not hugely memorable compared to the group’s earlier, more fun records (skits aside). But The Grind Date does include this track, which is absolute gold dust for the hip-hop simile connoisseur.

A potshot against the commercialisation of hip-hop, It’s Like That is full of smart lyrics. But it proves a challenge for even the most dedicated hip-hop simile spotter (me). We established long ago that similes of the form ‘it’s like X’ are acceptable, as long as X is an identifiable, specific thing. This is thanks to the law of the one-sided simile. So that means the track’s title does not count as an acceptable simile. ‘It’ being compared to ‘that’ is too unspecific for my puritan ears. If the title were, for example, It’s Like Chlamydia, that would be fine.

But It’s Like That presents a far more juicy problem of ambiguity than the boring old one-sided simile. That’s child’s play. Here, we delve into the true, deep meaning behind one of the language’s most innocent words: ‘like’. The majority of similes use the word, obviously. To pick a couple of random examples:

• Rhymes rugged and built like Schwarzenegger (Chef, Raekwon T., 1992)
• Diggin’ up crazy shit like psychology (Pa, Deda B., 1992)

But ‘like’ is often also used to mean ‘for example’ or ‘in this way’. And it’s also used a lot to convey what one person has said to another, as in ‘he was like “go check out ihhsdb.com, it’s fucking ace.” So I did, and he was right.’

Is this simile? Read on to find out…Although if it’s not simile I’ve just wasted a lot of words setting it up for nothing.

Like a drunk toddler making their way through a patch of banana skins, this tune presents significant opportunities for stumbling over similes. Prepare to take a philosophical journey to the very heart of what it means to be a simile.

Plug 2, who we sadly lost a couple of years back, starts things off. De La Soul have always been fond of picking odd stage names, and he was also known as Trugoy the Dove and…erm…Dave. Because he was called Dave. The track also features one Carl Thomas, who I assume is the chap wailing over the background. 

Anyway, let’s get on with it.

The lyrics

View full annotated lyrics on genius.com

[Verse 1: Dave]

It’s like New York without a New York Yanks
Better yet, New York without the New York franks
It’s like hot summers without no AC
Or never hitting numbers when you go to AC
It’s like six years of your life, go ask Rob
I’m like “Yo how is it?” he like “It’s like hard”

Crikey. When I’m teaching hip-hop similes at some Ivy League university, this question will be in my first exam paper:

How many similes are in the opening salvo of De La Soul’s It’s Like That? Show your working:

(a) Six
(b) Four
(c) Eight
(d) Please stop it Professor, you’re scaring me

Big up yourself those who picked option (c), as the answer is indeed eight. Marvellous. Those who picked (d), I can only apologise. You may leave the classroom.

Here’s how they break down:

• One: It’s like New York without a New York Yanks. Yup. Pretty straightforward
• Two: [It’s like] New York without the New York franks. This is clearly Dave revising his first simile to find a new comparison. Nice work, Dave.
• Three: It’s like hot summers without no AC. No arguments there.
• Four: Or [it’s like] never hitting numbers when you go to AC. I hope you revised. According to my ‘law of or’, this is a legitimate simile in its own right. If Dave had said ‘and never hitting numbers,’ this would not count.
• Five: It’s like six years of your life. Schoolboy stuff.
• Six, seven and eight: I’m like “Yo how is it?” he like “It’s like hard”

If you’re not sitting down already, you might want to at this point.

You read that right. That last one is three similes nested together (we experts call them ‘Russian doll similes’). You would be forgiven for questioning the first two uses of the word ‘like’ here. At first glance, it might look like nothing is being compared to anything here. How can this be simile?

Well, in fancy book-learning language, this is called colloquial quotative. If you want to go on a nerdy deep dive, here’s a paper from some clever Ivy League types (and my future colleagues). And according to Wikipedia, which let’s face it is actually more my level, this use of ‘like’ is also called…quotation through simile.

Boom.

But that name is as dry as a martini glass of cat litter. So it’s time to coin a new IHHSDB term. Ladies, gentlemen or whatever you want to be known as, I introduce the quimile. Stop sniggering at the back, this is serious stuff.

If I’m honest, I’ve probably discounted many of these in the past. To be thorough, I should go back through all 38 previous tracks cataloguing missed quimiles. But I can’t be bothered. Don’t tell Cornell about my lackadaisical approach to simile academia.

Anyway, all this simile philosophy means there’s not much time to go over what the similes in this section mean. Very quickly:

• ‘Yanks’ as in the New York Yankees baseball team
• Franks as in frankfurters in hot dogs (I think anyway)
• AC as in air conditioning and Atlantic City (and not winning in its many casinos)

Despite having many New York artists already in my simile database, these are the first similes to directly reference the great city.

Trying for that queen but you nothing but a man
You wanna keep it clean but you can’t
Why it gotta be like that
And what the life, see life is like a j shot
Shoot it son, they got

Your next exam question would be ‘Why is ”Why it gotta be like that?” not an acceptable simile?’ If you don’t know by this point in the post, I think we’re done here.

Luckily, there’s a straightforward simile right in the next line to take our minds off things. ‘J shot’ is, of course, slang for a jump shot in basketball.

Sorry for interrupting Dave mid-flow, but I felt it was important to interject. He continues now, still on the basketball riff.

One point one second, you half court
I’m feeling the adrenaline like you half-caught
Like pink slips and dipping these ink tips to paper

Simile complication aside, Dave’s chucking in some lovely wordplay here. And here we see the other side of the ‘law of or’, whereby the use of ‘and’ means we count the second simile as just one. And having Googled it, I can tell you that pink slips relate to adrenaline because in the US you get them when you’re being fired.

Imagine if we fuck around and lose hip-hop
Imagine if it didn’t exist
Imagine nothing shining your wrist
See, imagining to you is a risk
But think about it, like no chrome rims
And Timbs would be construction boots

Yes, imagine if hip-hop didn’t exist. Life would be more boring, but I’d have more free time. Timbs (as in Timberland boots) are a certified hip-hop staple. Yet we’ve only had one other Timberlands-related simile, in our last track, where Charizma told us ‘I kick rhymes like Timberland boots’.

Dave still has quite a bit to say on the commercialisation of hip-hop, and how it relates to (the lack of) creativity. So let’s press on.

We probably wouldn’t even substitute
For words we use defining our likes
I’m coal mining these mics
To keep that gold nugget like Dave Meggett
Giant like a motherfucker, like Dave said it

‘Defining our likes’, huh? I feel seen.

Dave Megget, apparently a former NFL running back, played for the NY Giants (apparently like a motherfucker). It’s lovely, lovely wordplay. Dave certainly did say it, and he said it beautifully. With these two we’re now up to 11 American football related similes in our database.

But ya ain’t listening, ya paper gon’ stack
Why it gotta be like that?

RIP Dave. You were a true simile maestro.

After that extreme mental workout of a first verse, I’m ready for a breather. So it’s timely that here comes Carl Thomas with the hook. As it’s sung rather than rapped, we ignore it in both the simile and word count. 

[Hook: Carl Thomas]

Just running, running, fast as I can
I’m trying to be a person but I gotta be the man
If I, can’t stand the life that I’m in
I gotta keep running cause I’m still gon’ win
Yes I got to go on (it’s like that, it’s like that)
Yes I got to go on (it’s like that, it’s like that)

Ok I’m ready to dive back in. I hope you are too, as Posdnuos takes the simile baton from Dave and certainly does it justice. Let’s take a look.

[Verse 2: Posdnous]

It’s like Slick Rick without the eye patch
More like saying slick shit you won’t catch
It’s like bedtime without your PJs
Or no fed timing in out the PJs
It’s like, one minute you got it, then you broke

Oh man. I was hoping for something a little simpler after Dave’s complicated starting verse. But Posdnous is not easing up on the simile stakes. Nope. He’s starting harder than a thirteen year old boy who just woke up from a Cheetara dream. It’s difficult to keep track (don’t worry, exam time is over), but we’re now up to 20 similes. And it’s barely the start of the second verse.

De La Soul worked with the monocular Slick Rick on their 2021 outing AOI: Bionix. He’s an absolute giant of hip-hop, and if he were more fond of similes would definitely be in the database already.

Posdnous is using similes to convey that feeling that something isn’t quite right, and he does it superbly. I’m not exactly sure what he’s getting at with ‘no fed timing’ – something to do with prison time? PJs in that context is of course ‘projects’, another hip-hop staple. We’ve had one other simile based around that once before, oddly also from Charizma, when he declared himself to be ‘funky like a project ho‘.

Like what I do with it? I copped a few with it
Looking like a problem, but you won’t get it solved
You working but you won’t get the job
It’s like, who would of thought
If you would’ve bought
Into my religion you’d be more like God
But you were steady swimming so you more like cod
See these fools is fish scale, converting to Ishmael
See I see it like, A alike, B alike
I was taught, if you play alike, be alike

I have officially run out of fingers and toes to count similes on. I think we’re up to 26. Only five tracks so far have broken the 20 simile mark, so we’re definitely in special territory here. 

I won’t try to analyse this bit of the verse. That’s not because it’s about religion and I’m afraid of misinterpreting it, more that I just don’t understand it. Posdnous is more cryptic than his first verse counterpart Dave. The Genius comments say it’s a diatribe against sellouts, and that’s good enough for me.

Mercifully, Posdnous eases up a bit on the similes for a bit, or we’d be here all day. Just two more grace the rest of his verse.

How they don’t see it for one to go pop
And this is how you treat hip-hop?
Imagine if you didn’t have that Phantom chrome sitting on a curb nigga
The word nigga wouldn’t be a bit disturbing nigga
See them roots are like begging for the rain
You entering my kingdom just a begging for the reign
Putting shit stain to paper, ink pain feeling like fifty-five licks on a slave niggas back
And not a one of y’all stopping to help
But why it gotta be like that?

The last simile here is easily the most powerful in the whole track. A sleight against black hip-hop artists degrading themselves and their culture with shit lyrics.

It’s at this point the rapping ends and gives way to two minutes of Carl Thomas bleating. This negatively affects the simile per minute score. But with such a healthy total number of similes, this track is making more waves than a cliff diving blue whale.

[Hook: Carl Thomas]

Just running, running, fast as I can
I’m trying to be a person but I gotta be the man
If I, can’t stand the life that I’m in
I gotta keep running cause I’m still gon’ win
Yes I got to go on (it’s like that, it’s like that)
Yes I got to go on (it’s like that, it’s like that)
[continues wailing at some length]

De La Soul are masters of what’s sometimes condescendingly called ‘intelligent hip-hop’. I don’t like that term as it suggests other hip-hop is stupid. Which is unfair, unless we’re talking about Will Smith. A less-condescending term is ‘conscious hip-hop’, i.e. that which focuses on social, political and cultural issues. And this tune definitely fits into that definition. De La Soul smartly explore their views of how commercialisation cheapens the art form. It’s brilliant – and definitely intelligent – stuff.

The theme of this post could be how tricky it can be to identify similes. That’s my fault, as I’ve grown quite generous in my interpretation of what counts as simile. But even without ‘quotation through simile’ (sorry, ‘quimile’, this would clock in at an impressive 20 similes. But I’m including quimiles, so we have instead a record-breaking haul, with 28 in total. It’s beaten Bahamadia‘s superb effort by two similes, and we looked at that over five years ago. We’re long overdue a new champion. It also comes in at an incredible 15 words per simile, which is going to take some beating.

Take a bow, De La Soul.

The stats