The song I chose is “Book of Rhymes” by Nas. The song is about before Nas became a rapper had books where he wrote rhymes and rapped to them. In the song he goes back into the books and uses the rhymes until he writes one that he thinks is beast. Through out the whole entire song Nas tries to find his comfort zone and the right word choice, word order to create a verse that explains a society he once lived in, the real world, overcoming something he thought would be impossible for himself to overcome.

From the title each line finds a way to rhyme with something as he says “How can I trust you when I can’t trust me?” he uses the words How can I trust you, when I can’t trust me. The use of the sentence trust you and trust me creates a rhyme. As well i realized he uses a series of figures of speech such as similes and metaphor’s to create realism in each line. For example he uses “I guess livin’ is prison when you live around clowns” in stanza 2 line 6 to explain living can be like prison when you live around people that have a bad influence on you. An example of the metaphor’s he uses to specifically tell a story and to create realism is when he says ”

There was a couple of alliterations in the rap as he states “Our values so low our values are no good” the words and letters in bold represent an alliteration.  Also it creates an assonance to create rhyming within phases or sentences. Assonance together with the alliteration creates a block of verses and rhymes. Nas uses other literal elements such as images to show us the neighborhood/society he grew up in and to provide symbolism of a negative society that has on people. He shows such images “pimps and card sharks thieves murderers with hard luck” / — “addicts and fiends prostitutes passin for teens is my society to gives as a view of the hard times and choices people made.

He takes all of everything and he himself is wondering how he got out of such a negative environment and turned into a poetic rapper with powerful messages to his fans. He gives us audience a message in the song where he starts with rhymes and feels it is weak. He keeps moving forward with an effort to top it off. He wants his poetry to show that everyone no matter how tough life can be you can still make it.