A BRIEF HISTORY OF DICE GAMES IN HIP HOP LYRICS

Much like in movies, music is also the soundtrack to life. We listen to music to put us in a bet­ter mood, to help us relax in stress­ful times, or to make any party a lot more fun.

Sing­ers, musi­cians, bands, and song­writers cre­ate every song with a pur­pose. Everything from each lyr­ic to each instru­ment­al note is meant to con­vey a spe­cif­ic mean­ing to the listen­er.

While some people might think oth­er­wise, hip hop songs also carry heavy­weight. Rap­pers often draw from their own life exper­i­ences to make music that acts as their own form of ther­apy.

Music would not be as power­ful or mean­ing­ful without the use of meta­phor and oth­er forms of fig­ur­at­ive lan­guage. To explain heavy top­ics or con­tro­ver­sial issues to listen­ers, lyr­ic writers have to con­sider the words that will help them under­stand.

A pop­u­lar com­par­is­on that hip hop artists make is between gambling with dice games and their own lives. So many listen­ers know what rolling the dice sym­bol­izes that this is an easy com­par­is­on to make.

Luck, chance, and risk are all com­monly tied to a game of dice as well as the game of life. Over the years that hip hop has been pop­u­lar, so many songs have referred to dice games to help listen­ers under­stand their mean­ing.

“Let Me Roll” by Scar­face (1993)

In his song “Let Me Roll”, Scar­face includes a few lines of verse that make ref­er­ence to rolling the dice and pla­cing bets.

This song talks about hanging out with friends, smoking marijuana and play­ing games of dice togeth­er. Hip hop cul­ture in the 90s focused a lot on marijuana because of its pop­ular­ity at the time.

Scarface’s lyr­ics make ref­er­ence to play­ing craps as a way to pass the time. Craps is one of the most pop­u­lar dice games in the casino, and might just be the only casino dice game most play­ers are famil­i­ar with.

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Using craps in his lyr­ics as a game that he and his friends played prob­ably gave listen­ers a good idea of a fun way to gamble. He raps about los­ing some change to a game of craps but not caring because it was a fun pas­time while smoking.

“Street Cinema” by Sporty Thievz (1998)

A few years after Scar­face dis­cussed play­ing craps and smoking pot, Sporty Thievz brought up a sim­il­ar idea.

While they don’t talk spe­cific­ally about craps, they do make the point that life is truly uncer­tain by com­par­ing their actions to rolling a pair of dice.

The lyr­ics seem to talk about com­mit­ting a crime and enga­ging in oth­er risky beha­vi­or. The part of the song that ref­er­ences play­ing dice con­veys that, no mat­ter what they do, it’s always a gamble. They’ll nev­er know what the res­ult might be until they do it.

Listen­ers under­stand what gambling means in terms of play­ing in a casino as well as just tak­ing a chance in oth­er aspects of life. Gambling is often asso­ci­ated with money, mak­ing this the per­fect com­par­is­on to a song about a rob­bery.

“Nellyville” by Nelly (2002)

By 2002, Nelly was dream­ing up his own ideal land in “Nellyville”. His dream­s­cape fea­tures every­one hav­ing the wealth they want and all the mater­i­al items they could ima­gine!

In “Nellyville”, he claims that there would not be a lot­tery because “the dice gon’ do what the dice gon’ do”, accord­ing to Nelly.

This lyr­ic shows how a game of dice relies mostly on chance rather than luck, just like life. Everything hap­pens for one reas­on or anoth­er by chance.

Nelly also uses the com­par­is­on to play­ing dice to bring in the idea of karma. In “Nellyville”, whatever you put into the world you will get back from it.

Many of the dreams in “Nellyville” are oppos­ite of what hap­pens in a pre­dom­in­antly black com­munity, like drugs and shoot­ings. Accord­ing to I Am Hip Hop magazine, racial pro­fil­ing still takes place wheth­er it is inten­ded or not. 

Hip hop artists, who are pre­dom­in­antly Afric­an Amer­ic­an, use their lyr­ics to address this issue and use ana­lo­gies to dice games to talk about their luck like Nelly does.

“Outta Con­trol” by 50 Cent (2005)

50 Cent made an impact on his listen­ers in 2005 with his song “Outta Con­trol”. In this song, he talks about his suc­cess and his abil­ity to have a great time because of it.

Towards the begin­ning of the song, 50 Cent raps about suc­cess being his drug and says he is high on life. Because of his suc­cess, he feels “lucky enough to bet it all on the dice”.

50 Cent uses the com­par­is­on to rolling dice and being lucky to how he has been so suc­cess­ful as an artist. 

People love gambling, though it takes money to be able to bet money. Since he is suc­cess­ful, he has the means to bet it all and is in the right, pos­it­ive state of mind to bet effect­ively!

“Go Girl” by Pit­bull (2007)

Pit­bull really seems to love the ladies in his 2007 song “Go Girl”. A pop­u­lar theme con­nec­ted to gambling is often club­bing and dan­cing, which Pit­bull isn’t afraid to bring up in his lyr­ics.

Pit­bull uses the lyr­ics “shake dem dice and roll ‘em” to ref­er­ence her dance moves. He is bring­ing the dan­cing scene he cre­ated all togeth­er by also talk­ing about rolling the dice.

People often say they are rolling the dice on love when they start a new rela­tion­ship. This is a rel­ev­ant point to make in this song too because he is express­ing his interest in a woman.

By talk­ing about an exper­i­ence at a club and using a ref­er­ence to a dice game, Pit­bull cap­tures the essence of the gambling nature of rela­tion­ships.

See­ing how hip hop music evolves through the years is intriguing, espe­cially in the way that the com­par­is­ons to dice games have changed. Even still, the theme of gambling and tak­ing chances has always been import­ant to hip hop artists.

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Rishma Dhaliwal

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds

Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voice­less. Cur­rently work­ing in TV, Rishma brings her PR and media know­ledge to I am Hip Hop and oth­er pro­jects by No Bounds.

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