I Used to Love Homecoming

I just downloaded my fifth single off the Graduation album, so it's time to come out of denial: kudos to Kanye on this one. Hate no more, Clebbie, hate no more.

"Homecoming" is a bumpin, circusy summer track. Had it come out last year, I would have blasted it on the drive down to SoCal for my high school reunion. Chris Martin sings the chorus; it melds beautifully.

So I issue the following gripe with regrets, and only in the comfortable certainty that my plog is to Kanye as a mite is to an elephant. No, less than that.

To the gripe.

After a whole song cleverly personifying West's hometown of Chicago comes this:


If you don't know by now
I'm talkin bout Chitown

Kanye. Why.

Of course we know you're talkin bout Chitown! Anyone who didn't "know by now" should be listening to Held Back, not Graduation. Here's the evidence West offers up to the "by now" point:

• Song entitled "Homecoming"
• Chorus: I'm comin home again
• Only Barack Obama more famously from Chicago than Kanye West
• Personified character's name: "We(i)ndy"
• Opens with shouts of "Chi-city" (three)

Digging deeper like Anderson Cooper, "Homecoming" almost too obviously harkens to the Common backpacky classic "I Used to Love H.E.R." (I'm not gonna tell you where Common is from, but it's sort of a secondary city near a big lake where baby bears are popular, and its first four letters are synonymous with "stylish" and the last three with "earlier".)

The "Used to Love" reference is evident from the first line: I met this girl when I was three years old/And what I loved most she had so much soul. Ripped directly from Common, but for the fact that Common met "her" at age ten.

"I Used to Love H.E.R." is an allegory about a relationship. The young lovers start out canoodling in an NYC park and enjoy a fulfilling Afrocentric phase, but eventually she breaks for the West Coast and rolls with gangsta bitches, which is when things go foul. He says he's not sulking about her time spent with them boyz in the hood, but clearly, he is sulking. He impotently swears he'll get her back; their future looks grim.

And then at the very end--Common, you tricky devil!--we find out that he was talking about: hip hop! All along!

(In a humorous twist, some West Coast rappers took the aforementioned sulk personally and wanted to start beef with Common, who is about as un-beef-seeking a rapper as you could find.)

"I Used to Love H.E.R." stays subtle enough to make the big reveal a delicious denoument. Kanye botches the parallel, giving cringe to a song that otherwise approaches perfect.

Haterade reserves purged, think I'll go listen to it again.

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