Can I Kick It? Lyrics

Make a note on the rhythm we gave ya
Feel free, drop your pants, check your ha-ir
Do you like the garments that we wear?

Phife closes his verse with a slightly sharper jab at the appropriation of Black fashions and beats by mainstream, white culture.

As we mentioned before, Phife and Tip are responding to and sampling Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side," the one where he invites audiences to check out the world of poverty and prostitution in New York City. 

The song includes that refrain, "And the colored girls go, doo, doo, doo," deploying the image of Black women on the streets of New York as part of what gives it "flavor." As you'll see, much of the response in "Can I Kick It?" happens musically, but this is probably the most explicit point in the lyrics.

First, Phife refers to "the rhythm we gave ya," probably referencing the rock and roll rhythms adopted by whites from Elvis Presley on forward. Then he gets even more explicit with "feel free, drop your pants, check your ha-ir," probably referencing the trend of sagging pants popularized by rappers and basketball players and eventually taken up by almost all young men for a period of time in the 1990s.

In a final poke at those who appropriate Black culture, Phife taunts, "Do you like the garments that we wear?" Although the joke is less explicit in other parts of the song, it seems like this is a pretty obvious way of saying, "Oh, so you think we're so cute and exotic?"