Blood 🩸 on… | 5ive Songs

1. Juice WRLD, “Blood on My Jeans”

💿 Legends Never Die • 🏷 Grade A Productions / Interscope • 📅 2020

In the context of 💿 Legends Never Die, the first posthumous album by 🎙 Juice WRLD, 🎵 “Blood on My Jeans” has a tough act to follow.  Thankfully, it’s a banger that is clearly up to the task.  Ultimately, it’s another winner for Juice with its banging trap drums, melodic sensibilities, and unapologetic, swagger-laden rhymes.

One of my favorite lyrics hail from the chorus.  Juice memorably raps:

“If you feel on my dick, there’s a gun
Not right there, just a little above.”

Now that’s ‘bloody’ gangsta!

Also Appears On 🔽:

🔗 🎧 Jeans 👖 | 3BOPS: No. 19 (2021)

2. Sampha, “Blood on Me”

💿 Process • 🏷 Young Turks • 📅 2017

On 💿 Process, the debut album by 🎙 Sampha, nothing trumps 🎵 “Blood on Me”.  Although groovy from the onset, “Blood on Me” isn’t a particularly exuberant record. Don’t let the radiant and soulful pipes of Sampha sway you away from the terror! “Blood on Me” has dark tilt that can be interpreted literally and metaphorically.

The chorus sums up the imminent danger that Sampha faces: “I swear they smell the blood on me / I hear them coming for me.” Essentially, he constructs a situation where he feels he’s being hunted down or forced to run from a devastating threat. He paints a frightening portrait throughout the course of the verses.  Even so, it’s definitely intriguing on the listeners’ end of things.

Also Appears On 🔽:

🔗 🎧 11 Songs by Male Artists Centered on Blood

3. Future, “Blood on the Money”

💿 DS2 • 🏷 Epic • 📅 2015

Arguably, 💿 DS2 is the best album of 🎙 Future’s career.  It’s shallow, but even so, the rapper clearly sounds in his zone rapping about drugs.  🎵 “Blood on the Money” is no different as it’s both a metaphor for drug money via hustling and quite literal judging by specific lyrics.

“They got blood on that money and I still count it,” Future spits on the hook, “I can’t help the way I’m raised up / That Easter Pink, I tried to give it up, I can’t give it up.” It’s highly doubtful that the superstar is still hustling at this point, but he definitely leads us to believe that’s the case given his delivery.  Undeniably, the 🏆 Grammy-winning rapper is definitely making bank, bloody or not!

4. Kanye West, “Blood on the Leaves”

💿 Yeezus • 🏷 Def Jam • 📅 2013

Most critics loved 🎙 Kanye West’s 💿 Yeezus – it scored an 84 via Metacritic. Still, the album wasn’t the 🏆 Grammy winner’s most successful from a commercial standpoint.  Nonetheless, there were some awesome moments, arguably none more thrilling than the 🎙 Nina Simone sampling 🎵 “Blood On The Leaves” (“Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees / Blood on the leaves”), easily one of the best songs of the rapper’s illustrious career.  Those biting, malicious synths within the production – WOO!

Honest and emotional, West delivers some superb rhymes. Such rhymes include a reference to a truism that money can’t buy everything.  Specifically, Mr. West asserts, “And all I want is what I can’t buy now.” Of course, there’s also some colorful references to 🎙 Jay-Z and 🎙 Beyoncé that we couldn’t possibly omit:

“I don’t give a damn if you used to talk to JAY-Z
He ain’t with you, he with Beyoncé, you need to stop actin’ lazy.”

5. Michael Jackson, “Blood on the Dance Floor”

💿 Blood on the Dance Floor • 🏷 MJJ Productions • 📅 1997

The 1990s were an interesting time for the late, great 🎙 Michael Jackson.  The ‘King of Pop’ continued to have success, but he also had plenty of controversy.  Between his ‘controversial’ 1995 album/compilation, 💿 HIStory – Past, Present and Future – Book I and his final album released during his lifetime, 💿 Invincible (2001), Jackson released the remix album, 💿 Blood on the Dance Floor (1997) led by the title track.  

🎵 “Blood on the Dancefloor” was one of the few new songs appearing on the album.  Where the sound is concerned, it sounds quite similar to many other New Jack Swing-infused R&B joints from Jackson (it was originally set to appear on Dangerous in 1991).  Vocally, he sounds true to himself, with the usual whoops, gritty ad-libs, and ample personality.  The record is hella groovy, though ‘Susie,’ who Jackson mentions explicitly in the chorus, is clearly something else (“Susie got your number and Susie ain’t your friend / Look who took you under with seven inches in”).  Yikes!