30-sec preview
2015 · From the album DS2 (Deluxe)
Stick Talk
by Future
The reading
A street-coded boast built on two slang verbs, where guns and robberies are the only vocabulary that matters to the people in the room
02 · Interpretation
Future's 'Stick Talk': The Language of Guns and Licks on DS2
Future released DS2 in July 2015, a sequel to the 2011 mixtape that helped invent his sound, and tacked Stick Talk onto the deluxe edition. By that point he had spent a year remaking himself: Monster, Beast Mode, 56 Nights, and then DS2 proper, a run of releases that hardened his persona from melodic Atlanta crooner into something colder and more chemical. Stick Talk sits at the tail end of that run, less a song than a code phrase repeated until it sounds like a threat.
The title is the thesis. "Stick talk" is gun talk; "lick talk" is robbery talk. Future opens by separating two camps: "they" talk stick, "we" talk lick. The distinction is hazy on purpose. He is not interested in cleanly assigning roles. The point is that there are people who speak this vocabulary fluently and people who do not, and the song is addressed only to the first group. The line "You can't understand us 'cause you're too soft" makes the gatekeeping explicit.
The hook as a closed room
The chorus is a stack of small, vivid actions: a shot of Hennessy, a neighborhood under investigation, the slang refrains. Nothing is narrated; everything is announced. Future's delivery on the hook leans into the slur of codeine, and the rhyme of "brazy, brazy" with itself (rather than with a different word) flattens the line into a chant. The repetition is the meaning. There is no progression because the worldview does not progress. It cycles.
The verses fill in the surrounding economy. Ten million in cash, a willingness to blow it on "a new toy," "Taliban bands" run through a money counter: wealth here is liquid, ostentatious, and disposable. The wealth exists next to a paranoia that never fully surfaces. The hood is under investigation. He has to keep the heat on the scene. A drive-by happens close enough that he is surprised the blood missed his shirt. These details are dropped in the same tone as the cars and the cash, which is the song's most honest move: in Future's narrator's world, the threat and the spoils are the same texture of life.
Codeine as narration style
DS2 is a codeine album, and Stick Talk is one of its purer expressions of that aesthetic. The narrator admits he has been "geeked ever since" he started sipping syrup, and the verses behave accordingly. The middle eight wanders, lying under oath, claiming not to remember a body count, ordering a sofa and telling a woman to "ride me round the whole world." The grammar dissolves. Lines do not connect so much as float adjacent to each other. This is not sloppy writing; it is the song performing its own intoxication. The Southside production, all sub-bass and slow-decaying snares, gives that drift somewhere to live.
The boasts about women in the third verse are casual to the point of contempt, which is consistent with the album's broader refusal to soften anything for the listener. DS2 is not a record that asks to be liked. Stick Talk in particular reads as a stress test: if you flinch at the slang, the drugs, the misogyny, or the gun talk, the song has already told you it was not built for you.
Why it endured
Stick Talk was not the single. Where Ya At, Fuck Up Some Commas, and Blow a Bag did the heavier lifting on radio. But the song's two-word phrases entered the slang economy quickly, and the track became one of the most-cited examples of how Future, around 2015, was less interested in writing songs than in minting vocabulary. Years later, the title phrase is still in regular rotation across rap, which is a strange kind of legacy: a song that succeeded not by telling a story but by handing listeners a password.
Themes catalogued
03 · Lyrics
"Stick Talk"
Took a shot of Henny, I've been going brazy, brazy
They say my whole hood got it under investigation
They know they talk that stick talk, that stick talk
They know we talk that lick talk, that lick talk
10 million dollars cash, fuck a friend
Started sipping syrup, I've been geeked ever since
Gotta keep that heat on the scene ever since
You know we talk that stick talk, that stick talk
I'm 'bout to fuck this cash up on a new toy
'Bout to fuck this cash up on a new toy
You can't understand us 'cause you're too soft
Taliban bands, run 'em straight through the machinery
They came through with a stick and you heard it
They came through in this bitch and they were swerving
I can't believe the blood ain't on my shirt
Because he got hit close-range
We be talking stick talk, we be talking bricks too
We be talking lick talk, and I'ma fuck your bitch too
I ain't got no manners for no sluts
I'ma put my thumb in her butt
Took a shot of Henny, I've been going brazy, brazy
They say my whole hood got it under investigation
They know they talk that stick talk, that stick talk
They know we talk that lick talk, that lick talk
I'm 'bout to fuck this cash up on a new toy
'Bout to fuck this cash up on a new toy
You can't understand us 'cause you're too soft
Taliban bands, run 'em straight through the machinery
I'ma tell a lie under oath
I can see it in your eyes, you want dope
I forgot, ain't got a word on body count
Riding in the club, barely tripping now
Ordered up a sofa, told her, "Ride me round the whole world"
I was on the E-way with that molly and that old girl
Get a little cheaper, you could win
Get it little harder, get the Benz
10 million dollars cash, fuck a friend
Started sipping syrup, I've been geeked ever since
Gotta keep that heat on the scene ever since
You know we talk that stick talk, that stick talk
I'm 'bout to fuck this cash up on a new toy
'Bout to fuck this cash up on a new toy
You can't understand us 'cause you're too soft
Taliban bands, run 'em straight through the machinery
Fully loaded, whip fully loaded clips
Fuck her with my niggas, I ain't smoke a zoot
Red eyes in, I got them zones with me
Taliban bands, run 'em straight through the machinery
Took a shot of Henny, I've been going brazy, brazy
They say my whole hood got it under investigation
They know they talk that stick talk, that stick talk
They know we talk that lick talk, that lick talk
10 million dollars cash, fuck a friend
Started sipping syrup, I've been geeked ever since
Gotta keep that heat on the scene ever since
You know we talk that stick talk, that stick talk
Lyrics via Google. Copyright belongs to rights holders.
04 · FAQ
Frequently asked
What does 'stick talk' actually mean in the Future song?
What are the 'Taliban bands' Future mentions in 'Stick Talk'?
How does 'Stick Talk' fit into the DS2 album as a whole?
Why does Future keep saying 'brazy, brazy' instead of 'crazy' in 'Stick Talk'?
Who produced 'Stick Talk' and how does the beat shape the song?
Is 'Stick Talk' based on real events in Future's life?
Why did 'Stick Talk' become so quotable even though it wasn't a single?
05 · Discography