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The rap group "Mobb Deep" from New York City — the song "Survival of the Fittest" (1995):

I live a world where squads hit the block hard
Ask my man Twin when he got bagged
That fucked me up, God, but shit happens for a reason
You find out who's your true peoples
When you're upstate bleeding
You can't find a shorty to troop your bid with you
Hit with a two to four is difficult
Wild on the streets, I try to maintain

What does "shorty" mean here?
What does "troop" mean here?
What does "bid" mean here?
What does "hit with" mean here?

Thanks.

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  • I’m voting to close this question because it is asking us to guess the meaning of 'rap' lyrics, which are not standard English.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jan 8, 2023 at 12:13
  • @LukeSawczak That should probably be an answer (although I think bid can only mean "prison sentence" in this context).
    – stangdon
    Commented Jan 8, 2023 at 16:43
  • I think non-standard English is very interesting, innit?
    – Lambie
    Commented Jan 10, 2023 at 15:44

1 Answer 1

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A "shorty" is a girl(friend). "Trooping" means walking (alongside?). A "two-to-four" is probably a prison sentence of two to four years. "Hit with" means having something unexpectedly given to you or done to you.

A "bid" could be time with a girl / a date, but it could also be a prison sentence.

Hence, this probably means:

You can't find a girlfriend to stick with you during your prison sentence. It's hard being given a sentence of two to four years.

As Michael said in a comment, this is very specific to rap. But given the popularity of rap and the ease with which the language spreads on Tiktok, it's fairly easy to hear this if you hang around teenagers (as I do in my role as high school teacher).

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    Well done. What's funny is that they did not ask what upstate means. If you are from NYC, go upstate is what people say for anything north of NYC. Here. prison. The long-terms ones are outside the city.
    – Lambie
    Commented Jan 10, 2023 at 15:45
  • Thank you for the answer. Although mentioning the user "Michael" in it seems inappropriate to me because he wanted to close this thread. That is, he wanted other users (including you) to be not able to answer this question.
    – Loviii
    Commented Jan 11, 2023 at 16:14

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