A Poem Entitled: Everybody's Something

To those living in Chicago who frequent music festivals in their summers and are avid fans of tie-dye and good music, Chance the Rapper needs absolutely no introduction. Yet for those of you who aren’t acquainted, Chance the Rapper is a Chicago based Rapper who gained local recognition and fame in 2012 from the popularity of his mixtape, 10 Day, a project based on a ten day suspension he received in his senior year of high school. Chance then skyrocketed to national and international fame only a year later on the release of his second official mixtape, Acid Rap. Acid Rap was highly renowned as one of the best projects of the year ranking at number 2 on Spin Magazine’s best of 2013 list, and 26 on Rolling Stone’s best albums of 2013 list, and it isn’t even an actual album. Acid Rap has received such acclaim and it is not for no reason, this mixtape is chocked full of fantastic instrumentals and incredibly thought-provoking lyrics, specifically track 6, “Everybody’s something”

The entire theme of this song is that everyone matters and everyone is “somebody’s everything”.  Without even venturing into the contributions of artists Saba and BJ The Chicago Kid, who both feature on the song, the piece is choked full of wordplay and lines that invoke thought. The first of which is a reference to the Rolling Stones found in the first verse.

I got the Chicago blues

We invented rock before the stones got through(threw)

This line is both a reference to Muddy Waters, father of the Chicago blues            subgenre, and the Rolling Stones, who take their name from one of his songs. Chance also calls attention to the common misconception that rock and roll was invented by white people, which purely isn’t true. As well as this hidden meaning, an interesting homophone can be found in this line. The words “threw” and “through” are homophones, so this line could be both a reference to the fact that rock and roll was invented before the Rolling Stones ever broke “through”, or like literal stones, “got threw”.

Shooting death with weighted dice

and hitting stains on birthday candles

To “hit a stain” means to steal something, and in another use of fantastic language, Chance has created another poetic line. Without saying it explicitly, Chance The Rapper finds two ways to explain that he is cheating death. Weighted dice are loaded so that they will always land on a specific number, and therefore Chance will never lose the wager of his life to a personified death. To extend the figurative language, Chance uses local vernacular to say that he is stealing years, years that he may not have gotten had he not cheated death on so many occasions.

My hard head stayed in the clouds like a lost kite

But gravity had me up in a submission hold

Like I’m dancing with the devil with two left feet and I’m pigeon-toed

In two small point ballet shoes with a missing sole

And two missing toes

But it’s love like Cupid kissing a mistletoe.

This is an incredible example of a stretched-bridge simile, and in all the time I have spent reading and writing poetry I can’t think of any others that surprise me every single time that I hear them, as this one does. There are three similes, two homophones, and a double-entendre all in the span of six lines of this song. Starting with the first two lines, Chance has big dreams but his reality, represented by gravity, is holding him back from achieving them. Then Chance goes on to say that he is “dancing with the devil with two left feet” and that he is “pigeon-toed”. This is a reference to the common phrase of dancing with the devil, which is similar to the phrase of playing with fire, and having two left feet. The first of which both involve tempting something dangerous, and to extend the theme of dancing, Chance goes on to say that he is dancing with two left feet, a phrase commonly used by those who aren’t good dancers. Both having two left feet and dancing shoes that are too small would make his dancing incredibly awkward and painful. This is where the first homophone appears. “Two small point ballet shoes” can also be heard as “Too small point ballet shoes” and both of these instances work in the theme of the lines. The second homophone and the only double entendre come at the end of this line, where Chance cites the missing sole on his ballet shoe. Yet “missing sole” can also be heard as “missing soul”, which would imply that although Chance is dancing with the Devil, he really has nothing to lose, and therefore all the impediments he is facing don’t matter, or he has already lost his sole to the Devil and he is now doomed to participate in this dance forever. Chance raps it all up by assuaging the listener and assuring that everything is ok by saying that “it’s love like Cupid kissing a mistletoe.” Both Cupid and mistletoe are symbols of love and affection, and the common practice is that when two people meet under mistletoe, they must kiss. Cupid kissing the mistletoe only makes for the entire image to be that much more loving. If this song is not poetry then no song is.