Kanye West - "Graduation"

Kanye West has had an extremely long career for a hip-hop artist, spanning over the course of 3 decades an producing over 109 singles. On of my personal favorites is Homecoming, which appears on his album Graduation. Homecoming draws from stories of Kanye's childhood to illustrate his connection with his home town of Chicago. While Kanye is no longer living in Chicago, Homecoming is meant as an homage to the city and describes the aspects that Kanye misses from his old home.

The most prominent poetic language used throughout the song is an extended metaphor. Kanye opens his first verse with the lines:

I met this girl when I was 3 years old
And what I loved most she had so much soul
She said "Excuse me lil homey, I know you don't know me
But, my name is Windy and I like to blow trees"

On the surface, Kanye is writing a love ballad to a girl he met when he was young, but this really isnt the case. Windy is a play of off Chicago's nick name "The Windy City" and Kanye moved to Chicago when he was 3. This metaphor continues throughout the song and adds depth to the relationship between Kanye and Chicago. By describing his love as the love between two people, Kanye lets the audience feel the great amount of intimacy that join him with Chicago.

In almost every single line, Kanye continues to develop the seperate stories of his romance with a girl and his romance with Chicago. In one of the most vivid lines, Kanye says:

In the nighttime her face lit up, so astounding  

On one level, this is just talking about a girls face brightened by all the city lights. However, it gets much more interesting when you view it as a personification and inspect it next to the underlying theme of Chicago. While Chicago doesn't have an actual face, its lights do turn on at night and the whole city shines. Though this line is simple in sentence and word choice, it does a good job of representing the goal of the song, which is the development of two stories. What I think is remarkable about this is how naturally Kanye is able to use this personification to weave the two stories together.

In one of the last lines of the second verse, Kanye says:

Reach for the stars so if you fall, you land on a cloud

This is a perfect example of an idiom that feels completly at home in the song. Kanye developed the plot of the song from his childhood to his rap career and uses this figurative language to explain that he is trying to make it to the top of the rap industry. The use of the words stars and clouds helps build on the previous language used to describe Chicago as a big, bright city.

Over the span of 3 minutes and 24 seconds, Kanye is able to build a love story in a cityscape, a love story to that cityscape, and connect them both back to his rap career through the use of his poetic language.