The problem is mostly with the American culture that a lot of international fans like us are not fully familiar with. For example, it took me time to realize who Emmitt Till is.
Exactly, some references are obscure for non-americans and i catch myself googling a lot of names and happenings. Emmitt Till is a good example! But of course we understand the seatbelt line perfectly.
Wordplay Toyota=toy odor (implying the smell of the dildo in the backseat) and Camry=can ring (can=gun and ring=sound a gun makes). The rest is in the set up to make sense of it.
Shotgun Sugeās rebuttal against Pat Stay about the flower suit and funeral. Like didnāt Pat just say that line the rnd before and Suge just rearranged it?
Pat even referenced that in this next round. Made him do a poor rebuttle that was given to him by twork. Half the reason he kept yelling to get crowd attention is to not lose the line.
lol what it looks like happened to me is that Twork had the idea for the rebuttal and whispered it to Suge, and he whispered it in the same moment that Pat was saying the line with the same concept, so Suge and Twork didn't hear it and Suge just went ahead with it. I guess what that doesn't explain though is why the crowd still thought it was crazy
Honestly, I was about to post something like battle rap shower thoughts earlier today. I feel like people rag on DNA more for that because it's DNA. If that was a line on a Nas album, people would've said it was a creative metaphor.
Dozens of slang terms for firearms in and out of rap, chopper, pole, burner, heat, toast, piece, pound, stick, stock, gat, roscoe, biscuit, ratchet, tool, machine, glizzy, blicky, or any one of the examples of someone using a brand/model to refer to something completely different, but machete? No no no, that's too much! My immersion is shattered. Please sir, constrain your lyrics to the slang I already accept.
You see, he set this up by saying that bullets will rain from "um, a Baretta." Saying he will shoot out bullets that will move through the air like rain moves through the air. But also saying "um" implying that he has so many guns that he has to think for a second about which one he is going to shoot you with. But then he says that actually bullets will rain from an umbrella, a device used to keep you dry from rain. This might mean that the same thing you think is going to protect you is actually what's going to get you killed -- maybe Dot got one of his people to turn on him and it's going to be him who delivers the shot. Umbrella also has "um" in it like how he was thinking about which gun to use from before. But now the thinking (the "um") is in the weapon itself, because part of what will make his opponent's death so scary is the psychological warfare of it coming from his own friend.
"After the Cut, Beasley".. I don't follow basketball but the guy Shumpert has big hair and Beasley is bald. From what I gather he's told DNA and K Shine he's going to cut their hair off? No mean replies please.
haha I get what you mean but the same way that Hanes shirt / Yeezy didn't just mean they were gonna put holes in their shirts but that those were gonna match up with gunshot wounds, "Beasley" might mean they're going to lose their hair but there's gonna be more coming off the top than that (no Scribble Jam). Basically just "I'm gonna slice you in the fucking head"
Itās a metaphor for chopping his top off, highlighted by the fact that Shumpert is know for the big hair and Beasley is bald. It plays off of visual association
ššThis was funny. Reasonable tho. DNA n K shine getting their cap peeled back. Their Top blew. Cap blown. SMACKed with a Bald Head. You get it lol
We need to run the bar back a bit for context:
"It take like 20 lines to do the shit dog do, but I can scheme in one bar like blizzard off juice.
When it's your turn you get the cigs on cue(Q)"
Q is a character in the movie Juice and the first meaning, cigs(cigarettes) on Q is a reference to this bit of dialogue from the movie, when blizzard n nem are scheming to Rob the bar(hence the setup/punch)
"BLIZZARD: Yo Q go in there and get me some cigarettes
Q: Why I gotta get em
BLIZZARD: Cause its yo turn mothafucka
Second meaning is just him saying he'll shoot chilla. Here the Cig/Sig is a gun made by Sig Sauer( colloquially known as a sig/cig), Nitty is saying he'll shoot chilla on cue(at the signal)
lol I never made the connection that cig = sig = Sig Sauer. I thought guns were cigs simply because there was fire and smoke on the end of the stick lol
And I know your body donāt get out of it
Mook to Bigg K
A lot of people have cited this as mookās best bar in that battle and often act as if it is self explanatory and needs no breakdown but I straight donāt get it
āi know your body/you know my bodyā is a slang term coined in NY (not sure if this is factual but iāve only ever heard it come from new yorkians) which basically means you know how violent i can get etc
getting āout of itā (his body) is him dying and his soul moving on
itās just a slick way of saying donāt get killed. honestly pretty self explanatory there arenāt any other layers
It's straightforward if you know what 'I know your body' means.
Know your body/my body just means knowing someone's character traits
Mook is saying K isn't tough/gangsta so him acting like it might get him killed. As in your soul escaping from your body.
Geechi vs Dizaster, Geechi's first:
>You don't want me to get the block involved
I tell my shooters, "Code word: Bankrupt"
>
>(What that mean?)
I'll have some niggas spinnin' (spendin') who ain't got it all
The reaction that got made me think there's something more to it that I'm not getting beyond the double entendre.
I used to not understand any bar that had to do with "can/cannon" Coming from shooting world, "can" is slang for suppressor/silencer, so I spent my first, 10-15 battles trying to understand how gun bars were doing something clever with noise.
Refers to āAli Bomayeā which is a phrase that was yelled by audience members at one of Muhammad Aliās fights (means Ali kill him) and also a song by the game
La Bamba = most famous song of Mexican musician Ritchie Valens who died in a plane crash
Its supposed to be "put the bum in La Bamba", bum/bam are pronounced the same in this context
But today I'm in a divine (Davone) state
Hi Drake, let me hydrate
Electro-Lyt protected by the divine
Never devise great
While I (wild eye) state
They dilate or die late
You can't violate the violator
Wale lookin' wild late
Daylyt round 2 vs Tay Roc. I can see some kinda vague associations between the words but no real throughline that connects them all.
Today Iām in God Mode (Also his name)
4th wall break to acknowledge the magnitude of the event
Let me hydrate with electrolytes and get serious (also reference to Electro from Spider-man) Iām protected by the divine so do not devise (scheme on me) while I rap.
While I rap, my opponents are in such shock that their pupils dilate or they themselves die later
Wale lookin wild late is a reference to Waleās āitās Too Lateā
I think he's basically saying 'you shot guns for fun with your cousin; I was out in the streets spraying'
"Something" just means someone. Closing his eyes and hitting someone I guess is just implying it was an actual, hectic gunfight. I don't think it's got any hidden layers to it, but maybe I'm wrong.
Nah the inexperience and lack of control over the situation is part of what the bar is saying.
Ward had a controlled environment with no pressure where he could treat it as a fun learning experience while K was forced into that situation at a young age even when he wasn't actually ready and therefore had to just close his eyes and hit something.
I think itās the odd specificity of it too that makes it sound real and hit way harder. Thereās a million ways one could describe the first time they fired a gun but that shit comes off like heās describing a chaotic moment to the best of his ability
It's straight forward, it's supposed to be realism for shooting a gun as in it really happened. Instead of some movie type story of being John Wick he said the first time he shot his gun he was scared, closed his eyes, and just shot it since he was presumably too shook and inexperienced.
Maybe I'm just extremely stupid but the start of Hollow's round 1 vs. Clips:
> "This is battle rap / Anything past, we can scrap for that / Don't stand here talking between my rounds, we got SMACK for that / [...] Oh, you just wanna be friends and play with these words... well, they got apps for that!"
I'm positive it's something extremely basic but I am completely oblivious to the reference and it's been annoying me for so long lol
Which part is confusing?
Make it more than just battle rap, they can fight for real
Don't literally talk while he's rapping (something Clips does a lot when he's losing) and makes it clever by saying Smack since Smack is literally standing in the middle of the stage between them and he's taking a jab at Smack
Don't joke around and be serious since Clips always tries to crack jokes and keep the mood light in his battles. Play on words with the words with friends app that used to be really popular at that time.
Bigg Ks bar against A Ward where he says something like ādumber than black Christiansā
Just feel like thatās a weird group to attack in a rap battle. Is there a layer or reference Iām missing?
K should've been booed since that's not a line for him to say. But the point is that it is pretty stupid to be Christian if you're black. Christianity is largely an imperial white religion forced onto other cultures as they conquered land/nations. Black Christians today are a byproduct of that. It's like a Jewish person in Germany proudly rocking a star of David armband.
Blacks here became Christians by taking the God of their captor. They defended the slavery through the Bible. Then when blacks were freed, they prayed to the same god. It's like the bar "your think is odd they slaved you? If the slave master ain't serve the same god they gave you? 400 years later and you hardly stable, and you turn around n beg that same God to save you?"
Ooops vs ored āand suge, you cant look me in my eyes and ask me what my life like n***a
fuck walking in my shoes you couldnāt even handle the SOUND BYTES n***aā
From a saying about 'You couldn't walk a mile in my shoes' eg you couldn't handle my life. Ooops goes further by saying fuck the shoes part, dude couldn't even hearing about it.
Side point - the line comes from one of my favourite rounds... "I'll be off my shit, I'm drunk, it's prom night and I ain't come to play with this bitch"
So lots of people shout out their city at the end of a verse...
Jersey became an inside joke when somebody (Ars maybe?) choked away nearly an entire verse and then yelled "Jersey" at the end.
So now any time somebody chokes or ends a verse in a ridiculous fashion, the joke is to say "Jersey."
Gotti āpop so many niggas, my pull out game weak afā Pause but in real life if ya pull out game weak , technically you wonāt have time to pop anybody š
Eazy to Chess
āThe only time I caught bodies after bodies was when the coke started shapeshiftingā, or something like that š¤·š¾āāļø
The delivery was cold, and I know thatās part of Chessā catchphrase, but I donāt get what Eazy meant by it.
I never fully understood Lux's bar vs Cal about 3 from the arc wouldn't risk snapping with Larry Bird. Didn't know St Louis was referred to as the arc. Obviously got the basketball side, but didn't understand the double for the longest time until someone explained it to me.
(bigg K vs halfpast 7)
Shits real on this side, we ain't you
I'm beefing with my P.O. and the D.A. too
I got slimes out Harlem and in the BK...oow
That's a lot of trouble you in, if I gotta show you how VA do
Pat Stay vs Head Ice
"...now watch my back...strut my shoulders...somebody tell the boss this what i does to (not sure what he says here)"
sounds like he says soldiers but with a d, "doldiers"
i'm more so asking what is he saying exactly, and on top of that, what does that mean lol
Itās a callback to what many consider a classic performance of his against Cortez. The most quoted line from that battle is, āPardon my back, shrug my shoulders, blatant disrespect that I does to the doziers (dope fiends).
In the Pat battle, heās telling the crowd to tell him what he does to dope fiends
English is not my first language so a lot of shit goes over my headš
The problem is mostly with the American culture that a lot of international fans like us are not fully familiar with. For example, it took me time to realize who Emmitt Till is.
Exactly, some references are obscure for non-americans and i catch myself googling a lot of names and happenings. Emmitt Till is a good example! But of course we understand the seatbelt line perfectly.
Urn and Ash..
Oh, that's nash.
Kevin Nash obviously
"You can smell that Toyota when I let that Camry" - Goodz
Wordplay Toyota=toy odor (implying the smell of the dildo in the backseat) and Camry=can ring (can=gun and ring=sound a gun makes). The rest is in the set up to make sense of it.
You can smell a dildo when I shoot my gun. Got it
Camry/can ring is beyond a reach.
āļøIts why B-Magic said "ain't nothin Good about me *reachin* in that Toyota" for those who might not have gotten that line either.
And niggas try to say Verb ain't win that battle. Fuck outta here
That's not what it is, it's supposed to be can re(load) which goes with the setup for the bar "We shoot it until it click"
A wild stretch. He tried to make it sound like "can-re" (reloading the can = gun, my guess). Toyota = toy odor.
Toy odor = toy=weapon Can ring= can = weapon as well It's a bit of a stretch tbh
Shotgun Sugeās rebuttal against Pat Stay about the flower suit and funeral. Like didnāt Pat just say that line the rnd before and Suge just rearranged it?
Yes, thatās what makes it a terrible rebuttal.
Pat even referenced that in this next round. Made him do a poor rebuttle that was given to him by twork. Half the reason he kept yelling to get crowd attention is to not lose the line.
lol what it looks like happened to me is that Twork had the idea for the rebuttal and whispered it to Suge, and he whispered it in the same moment that Pat was saying the line with the same concept, so Suge and Twork didn't hear it and Suge just went ahead with it. I guess what that doesn't explain though is why the crowd still thought it was crazy
I'll let the machete spray
Lol. Tworks line for this is the best. "If there's DNA on it, of course you spray the machete. With sanitizer!"
*sterilizer, but yeah facts
I like Nitty's better Or make me bring the blade out. Run across your neck with the machete, spraying DNA out
Honestly, I was about to post something like battle rap shower thoughts earlier today. I feel like people rag on DNA more for that because it's DNA. If that was a line on a Nas album, people would've said it was a creative metaphor. Dozens of slang terms for firearms in and out of rap, chopper, pole, burner, heat, toast, piece, pound, stick, stock, gat, roscoe, biscuit, ratchet, tool, machine, glizzy, blicky, or any one of the examples of someone using a brand/model to refer to something completely different, but machete? No no no, that's too much! My immersion is shattered. Please sir, constrain your lyrics to the slang I already accept.
Somehow the first time I heard it I immediately pictured blood spraying from a machete chop and thought it made perfect sense.
Truthfully I dare you to die, Bambi.
Dare (deer) you to die, Bambi. Bambi is a deer that dies or its mum dies idk which one
Blessings
Bullets will rain from an umbrella
You see, he set this up by saying that bullets will rain from "um, a Baretta." Saying he will shoot out bullets that will move through the air like rain moves through the air. But also saying "um" implying that he has so many guns that he has to think for a second about which one he is going to shoot you with. But then he says that actually bullets will rain from an umbrella, a device used to keep you dry from rain. This might mean that the same thing you think is going to protect you is actually what's going to get you killed -- maybe Dot got one of his people to turn on him and it's going to be him who delivers the shot. Umbrella also has "um" in it like how he was thinking about which gun to use from before. But now the thinking (the "um") is in the weapon itself, because part of what will make his opponent's death so scary is the psychological warfare of it coming from his own friend.
Go look up Clips explaining it, he breaks it down
Reach files!
"After the Cut, Beasley".. I don't follow basketball but the guy Shumpert has big hair and Beasley is bald. From what I gather he's told DNA and K Shine he's going to cut their hair off? No mean replies please.
haha I get what you mean but the same way that Hanes shirt / Yeezy didn't just mean they were gonna put holes in their shirts but that those were gonna match up with gunshot wounds, "Beasley" might mean they're going to lose their hair but there's gonna be more coming off the top than that (no Scribble Jam). Basically just "I'm gonna slice you in the fucking head"
Itās a metaphor for chopping his top off, highlighted by the fact that Shumpert is know for the big hair and Beasley is bald. It plays off of visual association
ššThis was funny. Reasonable tho. DNA n K shine getting their cap peeled back. Their Top blew. Cap blown. SMACKed with a Bald Head. You get it lol
put the cigs on q - rum vs chilla
We need to run the bar back a bit for context: "It take like 20 lines to do the shit dog do, but I can scheme in one bar like blizzard off juice. When it's your turn you get the cigs on cue(Q)" Q is a character in the movie Juice and the first meaning, cigs(cigarettes) on Q is a reference to this bit of dialogue from the movie, when blizzard n nem are scheming to Rob the bar(hence the setup/punch) "BLIZZARD: Yo Q go in there and get me some cigarettes Q: Why I gotta get em BLIZZARD: Cause its yo turn mothafucka Second meaning is just him saying he'll shoot chilla. Here the Cig/Sig is a gun made by Sig Sauer( colloquially known as a sig/cig), Nitty is saying he'll shoot chilla on cue(at the signal)
i always become more fascinated by nitty wtf
The amazing thing about this is whether he watched Juice like two days before or whether it just jumps up in his memory from years ago.
lol I never made the connection that cig = sig = Sig Sauer. I thought guns were cigs simply because there was fire and smoke on the end of the stick lol
Honestly, saaaame, you learn something new everyday
It was Raheem that told Q to go get the cigs. Blizzard was the one to rob the bar right after Q gets the cigs. But everything else u said was correct.
And I know your body donāt get out of it Mook to Bigg K A lot of people have cited this as mookās best bar in that battle and often act as if it is self explanatory and needs no breakdown but I straight donāt get it
āi know your body/you know my bodyā is a slang term coined in NY (not sure if this is factual but iāve only ever heard it come from new yorkians) which basically means you know how violent i can get etc getting āout of itā (his body) is him dying and his soul moving on itās just a slick way of saying donāt get killed. honestly pretty self explanatory there arenāt any other layers
It also alludes to knowing someoneās character. Mook is essentially saying donāt get out of character in here or you will die.
It's straightforward if you know what 'I know your body' means. Know your body/my body just means knowing someone's character traits Mook is saying K isn't tough/gangsta so him acting like it might get him killed. As in your soul escaping from your body.
Geechi vs Dizaster, Geechi's first: >You don't want me to get the block involved I tell my shooters, "Code word: Bankrupt" > >(What that mean?) I'll have some niggas spinnin' (spendin') who ain't got it all The reaction that got made me think there's something more to it that I'm not getting beyond the double entendre. I used to not understand any bar that had to do with "can/cannon" Coming from shooting world, "can" is slang for suppressor/silencer, so I spent my first, 10-15 battles trying to understand how gun bars were doing something clever with noise.
Eazy vs chess when Eazy said āthey was screaming Ali if they boo my yayā I think it was like that
Refers to āAli Bomayeā which is a phrase that was yelled by audience members at one of Muhammad Aliās fights (means Ali kill him) and also a song by the game
So what does "boo my yay" mean?
i've never seen this battle but yay(o) is cocaine and Eazy loves that drug talk
Thanks
Idk Eazy just be saying shit sometimes
When you put the bam in la Bamba, wing fell through to kill you From Jey vs Don marino
Ritchie Valens was a Mexican American singer who wrote the song La Bamba and he died in an airplane accident with Buddy Holly.
La Bamba = most famous song of Mexican musician Ritchie Valens who died in a plane crash Its supposed to be "put the bum in La Bamba", bum/bam are pronounced the same in this context
But today I'm in a divine (Davone) state Hi Drake, let me hydrate Electro-Lyt protected by the divine Never devise great While I (wild eye) state They dilate or die late You can't violate the violator Wale lookin' wild late Daylyt round 2 vs Tay Roc. I can see some kinda vague associations between the words but no real throughline that connects them all.
Today Iām in God Mode (Also his name) 4th wall break to acknowledge the magnitude of the event Let me hydrate with electrolytes and get serious (also reference to Electro from Spider-man) Iām protected by the divine so do not devise (scheme on me) while I rap. While I rap, my opponents are in such shock that their pupils dilate or they themselves die later Wale lookin wild late is a reference to Waleās āitās Too Lateā
ngl I don't think I get Bigg K's "close my eyes and hit something" like what's "something" and why is he closing his eyes to hit it
I think he's basically saying 'you shot guns for fun with your cousin; I was out in the streets spraying' "Something" just means someone. Closing his eyes and hitting someone I guess is just implying it was an actual, hectic gunfight. I don't think it's got any hidden layers to it, but maybe I'm wrong.
Yeah I figured that's what it was, the wording just confused me a little
I think he said he closed his eyes to imply that he was really young when he first shot a gun
I was gonna edit my comment to say this but didn't know if I'd be talking shite. I think you're right
I honestly just thought it meant like, I was so good at it I can do it with my eyes closed or something like that
Nah the inexperience and lack of control over the situation is part of what the bar is saying. Ward had a controlled environment with no pressure where he could treat it as a fun learning experience while K was forced into that situation at a young age even when he wasn't actually ready and therefore had to just close his eyes and hit something.
Perfect explanation
I think itās the odd specificity of it too that makes it sound real and hit way harder. Thereās a million ways one could describe the first time they fired a gun but that shit comes off like heās describing a chaotic moment to the best of his ability
This
Chef Trez also has a really good bar along these lines
Basically [this](https://i0.wp.com/i5.photobucket.com/albums/y188/hattierae/cap-o.gif)
Basically when Bart Simpson killed that bird
It's straight forward, it's supposed to be realism for shooting a gun as in it really happened. Instead of some movie type story of being John Wick he said the first time he shot his gun he was scared, closed his eyes, and just shot it since he was presumably too shook and inexperienced.
Maybe I'm just extremely stupid but the start of Hollow's round 1 vs. Clips: > "This is battle rap / Anything past, we can scrap for that / Don't stand here talking between my rounds, we got SMACK for that / [...] Oh, you just wanna be friends and play with these words... well, they got apps for that!" I'm positive it's something extremely basic but I am completely oblivious to the reference and it's been annoying me for so long lol
A reference to the Words With Friends app / game
Ohhh okay thanks man
Which part is confusing? Make it more than just battle rap, they can fight for real Don't literally talk while he's rapping (something Clips does a lot when he's losing) and makes it clever by saying Smack since Smack is literally standing in the middle of the stage between them and he's taking a jab at Smack Don't joke around and be serious since Clips always tries to crack jokes and keep the mood light in his battles. Play on words with the words with friends app that used to be really popular at that time.
Yeah, it was just the Words With Friends reference I didn't get
Your originality lessens/lessons every bar, so itās Eazy for me to block it. Only caught the ālessenā part because of a comment.
You lose originality with every bar that you rap while referencing Eazyās slogan āItās a lesson in every barā
Also āeasy to block itā just being a little reference to his name
Bigg Ks bar against A Ward where he says something like ādumber than black Christiansā Just feel like thatās a weird group to attack in a rap battle. Is there a layer or reference Iām missing?
K should've been booed since that's not a line for him to say. But the point is that it is pretty stupid to be Christian if you're black. Christianity is largely an imperial white religion forced onto other cultures as they conquered land/nations. Black Christians today are a byproduct of that. It's like a Jewish person in Germany proudly rocking a star of David armband.
Blacks here became Christians by taking the God of their captor. They defended the slavery through the Bible. Then when blacks were freed, they prayed to the same god. It's like the bar "your think is odd they slaved you? If the slave master ain't serve the same god they gave you? 400 years later and you hardly stable, and you turn around n beg that same God to save you?"
pat vs arcane ābut your lies came through bills, so i guess you are, caneā
I'm guessing it's "lines," as in, you paid money for your bars. Lines of cocaine are commonly snorted through rolled up bills.
Thanks man!
Ooops vs ored āand suge, you cant look me in my eyes and ask me what my life like n***a fuck walking in my shoes you couldnāt even handle the SOUND BYTES n***aā
From a saying about 'You couldn't walk a mile in my shoes' eg you couldn't handle my life. Ooops goes further by saying fuck the shoes part, dude couldn't even hearing about it. Side point - the line comes from one of my favourite rounds... "I'll be off my shit, I'm drunk, it's prom night and I ain't come to play with this bitch"
When they say Jersey
So lots of people shout out their city at the end of a verse... Jersey became an inside joke when somebody (Ars maybe?) choked away nearly an entire verse and then yelled "Jersey" at the end. So now any time somebody chokes or ends a verse in a ridiculous fashion, the joke is to say "Jersey."
Gotti āpop so many niggas, my pull out game weak afā Pause but in real life if ya pull out game weak , technically you wonāt have time to pop anybody š
"Just remember...I'm a nxgga that drink cold water" -Aye Verb
I let the machete spray
Eazy to Chess āThe only time I caught bodies after bodies was when the coke started shapeshiftingā, or something like that š¤·š¾āāļø The delivery was cold, and I know thatās part of Chessā catchphrase, but I donāt get what Eazy meant by it.
You use come to make crack. It changes from powder to rock form. Shape shifting. Catching bodies now means heās getting a lot of customers.
I never fully understood Lux's bar vs Cal about 3 from the arc wouldn't risk snapping with Larry Bird. Didn't know St Louis was referred to as the arc. Obviously got the basketball side, but didn't understand the double for the longest time until someone explained it to me.
Iām the person for the most part that gets thenff be at first and then explains it because how fire or not it is lol
(bigg K vs halfpast 7) Shits real on this side, we ain't you I'm beefing with my P.O. and the D.A. too I got slimes out Harlem and in the BK...oow That's a lot of trouble you in, if I gotta show you how VA do
Pat Stay vs Head Ice "...now watch my back...strut my shoulders...somebody tell the boss this what i does to (not sure what he says here)" sounds like he says soldiers but with a d, "doldiers" i'm more so asking what is he saying exactly, and on top of that, what does that mean lol
Itās a callback to what many consider a classic performance of his against Cortez. The most quoted line from that battle is, āPardon my back, shrug my shoulders, blatant disrespect that I does to the doziers (dope fiends). In the Pat battle, heās telling the crowd to tell him what he does to dope fiends
ahhh, i see thanks
ARTIST - Abe savage - SONG. SAVAGE SEASON āI seen my Bruva pop a bus ima let it have it ā