“Bittersweet Poetry” – Kanye West

“Bittersweet Poetry” is one of Kanye’s most underrated songs, as it failed to receive the exposure it deserves since the track was a Japan exclusive for the album Graduation. This song features a hook by Joh Mayer. The main theme of the song is about an ex-lover that Kanye has dubbed as “Bittersweet”. This word is commonly associated with food that exhibits both properties of sweet and bitterness. The hook describes how Kanye proclaims to his lover that he “doesn’t want you, but I need you”, which is indicative of a struggle he has with letting go.

The song shares many themes and idea with Kanye’s later released song “Gold Digger”, in which he struggles to let go a woman who clearly is in it only for the money, “Gold Digger” contains the line “I don’t care what none of y’all say, I still love her” which emphasises his struggle with letting go of what isn’t good for him.

However, the song can be interpreted in a completely different way as a poem that speaks about Kanye’s struggle with alcohol and the problems that it has caused for him. He acknowledges how the in the moment “feel good” sensation of alcohol is sweet but the prolonged effects of it negatively impact his relationship with his family, friends and himself. Kanye tells us that “we’ve been generally warned, that’s what the surgeon says”, which is an allusion to the warning labels commonly found on liquor and cigarettes written by the “surgeon general”. Kanye describes how in his self-struggle, he “mixes [his] emotions with tequila” and how his current problems have lead to him to “drinking again”.

One of the strongest lines in the song is when Kanye exclaims “I’d never hit a girl, but I’ll shake the shit out of you”, which is a reference to Chris Rock making a similar statement. Kanye could be struggling with alcohol addiction and understands how in his drunken state, it could lead to domestic abuse and fights. Considering both interpretations of the song, it’s interesting to consider the line “”and this relationship it even got me back to drinkin” could be a statement about how his drinking causes problems with his bittersweet lover, and this conflict, in turn, causes him to drink away his problems again. Kanye is in an endless loop he can’t seem to get out of.

Overall, “Bittersweet Poetry” is just another proclamation of Kanye’s struggle with his inner self and his surrounding environment. It’s clearly a cry to better himself, a proclamation to god to “help him now” during Kanye’s “emergency”. The song is one that doesn’t necessarily seems to fit in the scope of Graduation, an album about self-accomplishment and self-worth, but at the same time, it does. It shows how beneath the success and his new found fame, at the end of the day, Kanye is still an individual like all of us struggling with his own conflicts in an effort to better himself.