Not a hip hop lyric, but then the OP didn’t put that in the question.
When I was a young lad, I lived in Crete, and I explored Cretan folk music, because that’s what you hear in Crete. One of the greats of Cretan folk music was Kostas Mountakis. Nikos Xilouris was greater and more versatile (and more photogenic), but Mountakis established the groundwork for the modern folk tradition.
One song I particularly liked was Άχι και σαραντάρισα, “Alas, I’m forty”:
Alas I’m forty by Nick Nicholas on Opɯdʒɯlɯklɑr In Exile
Alas I’m forty, fit no more for love.
I feel like running crazy down the streets.[…]
What’s to become of me? My soul, it shivers.
Like a snail feeler my gall bladder shrivels.[tʃe leo ida θa ʝeno, tʃe tremi i psiçi mu
sa du xoxʎu to tʃerato ezarose i xoʎi mu]
I heard that song when I was maybe ten.
It was only last year that I realised that the song was censored. Last year.
It isn’t the gall bladder /xoli/ that’s shrivelling. It’s a word that rhymes with gall bladder.
And now you know what the Greek dialect word /psoli/ means.
Dedicated to Michael Masiello, for our latest exchange.