Metaphors and use of personification in rap

I was bumping the Kanye track “homecoming” on the plane to Frankfurt and spent almost the entire trip wondering who the hell Wendy was and why she was so important to Señor West that made him devote a whole song to her.

“I met this girl when I was three years old
And what I loved most she had so much soul
She said, excuse me little homie, I know you don't know me- but,
My name is Wendy and, I like to blow trees and…”

You can find the rest of the lyrics to this song here.

So I listen again. And again. And then there it is…it was there the whole time. At the end of the song Kanye spits: “If you don't know by now, I'm talkin 'bout Chi-Town”. The whole song is a metaphor for Kanye’s hometown of Chicago, where he moved when he was three years old with his parents from Atlanta. Homecoming is a homage to the city that shaped him. The city where it all began. The city where he started studying art classes at The American Academy of Art but dropped out due to bad grades and too little motivation to instead follow his musical ambitions.

And so, Wendy is really Windy – the personification of ‘the windy city’, Chicago. It is no coincidence either that Common (also from Chicago and an inspiration to Kanye) is in this clip and also has a very similar song. ‘I used to lover H.E.R’ from his 1994 album ‘Resurrection’.



This classic tune is about a girl, who not surprisingly is also a metaphor for something else he cares deeply for– Hip Hop.

“I met this girl, when I was ten years old
And what I loved most she had so much soul
She was old school, when I was just a shorty
Never knew throughout my life she would be there for me”

You can find the rest of the lyrics to this song here.

Common, who had a massive underground following in the late 90s, has always been a hip hop purist and his song ‘I used to love H.E.R’ talks about the evolution of hip hop from something raw and real that he loved into a commercialized and exploited art form.

He describes in the song how hip hop started in New York and was all about cyphers in the park. It was “Original, pure untampered and down”. Hip hop eventually became more popular –it was played in clubs, at parties and eventually in videos, but importantly it still maintained it’s political voice and social morals. Common implies that the West Coast then utilised the genre to promote ‘gangsta rap’ and started making serious money off the sensationalism of their themes. He finishes the song by explaining the state of hip hop in 94 – being popularised and glorified through drugs, money and crime.

“I might've failed to mention that this chick was creative
But once the man got you well he altered her native
Told her if she got an image and a gimmick
that she could make money, and she did it like a dummy
Now I see her in commercials, she's universal
She used to only swing it with the inner-city circle”

So check the clips out if you haven’t seen them before (particularly Kanye fans) as they are pretty interesting tunes and you might pick up on some things you didn’t realise before. And now you know.

Much love
Ingers