Songfacts®:

• 4 Your Eyez Only follows the story of a childhood friend of Cole's who got caught up in the streets, started a family but died young. This song assumes the perspective of the youth at the age of 17, as he starts selling crack as a means to escape poverty, despite the risks. He knows what he is doing is wrong and doesn't want to end up in the penitentiary, but it's the only way the young man knows to make ends meet.
  
  Many African Americans have the mentality that there only three avenues whereby a black man can become a legend: drug dealing, music and sport. Cole demonstrates his resentment on "Immortal" at the way society enforces this idea.
• In my mind I been cryin', know it's wrong but I'm sellin'
  Eyes wellin' up with tears
  Thinkin' 'bout my niggas dead in the dirt
  Immortalized on this shirt
  
  Cole's friend knows that his lifestyle will eventually get him killed. However his name will live on, as the custom to make a shirt in memory of the deceased means that he'll be immortalized on the garment.
• Cole foretells the death of his friend during the hook.
  
  Forward with the plot
  One-Seven-Forty-Five
  
  At 17:45 minutes on the 4 Your Eyez Only CD, the listener arrives at the part of the song "Change" where Cole's friend dies.