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eh. i mean Eminem disses everyone. i'd be honored to be dissed in an Eminem song lolol


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You put your life out on the line

You're crazy all the time

 

which suggest she (or the person she sings about) may have had to blend in, in dangerous environments. And where are ghettos relative to club scenes generally? I guess it depends on the quality (or type of) club, and I really don't know; I'm just asking.

 

I'm not sure if it counts as some sort of ghetto type of area or as a dangerous environment, but I think she's referring to an actual spot: the Gas Station. According to this Wikipedia page on Downtown music, the Gas Station was a space in Manhattan that supported Downtown music from the 1960s.

 

A google search on the place tells us this:

  • From the New York Times: "The alternative studio, gallery and performance space at Second Street and Avenue B had been an abandoned gas station and then a shooting gallery for heroin users before five local artists routed the junkies, swept away a carpet of used hypodermic needles and erected the sculpture and a one-of-a-kind fence made of scrap metal." source
  • "Initially an actual gas station, it was abandoned and then subsumed by the badlands culture of the East Village in the 1980s, which turned it into a junkie hive before some entrepreneurial souls cleaned the place up and turned it into the performance space." source
  • "GAS STATION was an abandoned gas station at Avenue B & 2nd Street NYC that we used as a metal workshop, bar, outdoor sculpture exhibition space, an indoor and outdoor performance space, concerts venue and billboard art location. We welded everything out of abandoned scrap metal trash, including the perimeter fence and chairs." source
  • Video footage of inside the Gas Station here.

Pictures of the (now long gone) Gas Station:

 

 

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On one of the pictures, someone commented: "Probably the worst corner in the east village for the sale of heroin. At any given time there would be 20 plus people hawking drugs without any concern for the police." 

 

In this context, lyrics such as "Club queen on the downtown scene", "Shining like gunmetal, cold and unsure", "Baby you're so ghetto", and "You're looking to score" suddenly make sense. 

 

I obviously can't know for sure, but I assume she must've known about the area, as she frequently performed in bars and other small venues around the East Village area. And hey, wasn't she the "Queen of the Gas Station"?

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I'm not sure if it counts as some sort of ghetto type of area or as a dangerous environment, but I think she's referring to an actual spot: the Gas Station. According to this Wikipedia page on Downtown music, the Gas Station was a space in Manhattan that supported Downtown music from the 1960s.

 

A google search on the place tells us this:

  • From the New York Times: "The alternative studio, gallery and performance space at Second Street and Avenue B had been an abandoned gas station and then a shooting gallery for heroin users before five local artists routed the junkies, swept away a carpet of used hypodermic needles and erected the sculpture and a one-of-a-kind fence made of scrap metal." source
  • "Initially an actual gas station, it was abandoned and then subsumed by the badlands culture of the East Village in the 1980s, which turned it into a junkie hive before some entrepreneurial souls cleaned the place up and turned it into the performance space." source
  • "GAS STATION was an abandoned gas station at Avenue B & 2nd Street NYC that we used as a metal workshop, bar, outdoor sculpture exhibition space, an indoor and outdoor performance space, concerts venue and billboard art location. We welded everything out of abandoned scrap metal trash, including the perimeter fence and chairs." source
  • Video footage of inside the Gas Station here.

Pictures of the (now long gone) Gas Station: …

 

….

 

In this context, lyrics such as "Club queen on the downtown scene", "Shining like gunmetal, cold and unsure", "Baby you're so ghetto", and "You're looking to score" suddenly make sense. 

 

I obviously can't know for sure, but I assume she must've known about the area, as she frequently performed in bars and other small venues around the East Village area. And hey, wasn't she the "Queen of the Gas Station"?

 

 

NYT won't let me read their article, because apparently I've seen 3 others of theirs this month (boo hoo). The critical thing about your interpretation vis a vis how LDR could be referring to that place, is the timespan of the Gas Station's operation. If it were being used as a performance place around 2005, then she would have been around 20 and may have been referring to personal experiences there, otherwise if it were much earlier that it ceased to operate, she'd have to be writing about it historically. The "looking to score" line becomes the most ominous, in this context, I guess. "Gun metal" might have been a reference to bling (as the reference appears to be to a song avatar). Also, she does have Fordham Road (song), which if we take as autobiographical suggests (along with your interpretation) she knew of dangerous places, but in FR she made the life-preserving choice with respect to them.
 
In reviewing Queen of the Gas Station, it's pretty clear that it is her "white trash" period (Utah love?), where gas stations (casinos, Indian reservations) are the most engaging places to be around. If autobiographical, she seems to have lived a lot (i.e., reverse dog years; one of hers is seven of mine).

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