She rhymes “nothing” with “nothing”. Is that considered legit? We are not even talking homophones or homonyms.
Well, since I have zero idea what this is about, or who “she” is, I vote for Not Legit.
ps: Don’t listen to War Pigs (Black Sabbath, rhyming “masses” with “masses”).
It’s about identical rhymes.
Fair enough about “she” — it is sung by Nicki Minaj, but I do not know for sure who was ultimately responsible for the lyrics.
It’s not the only one… [to invoke John Lennon]
If there’s a fancy word for it, I guess it’s legit.
good collection of examples there!
In our poetry classes in college, we called them identity (or identical) rhymes. And, yes, they are perfectly legitimate. Why wouldn’t they be? There’s all sorts of rhymes.
From Emily Dickinson:
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
She also plays around with a lot of slant rhyme in that poem, “Because I Coul Not Stop for Death”
Perhaps it’s better to call it a kind of repetition than a kind of rhyme?
From The Kids Song, by Moxy Früvous
If it’s in the place where a rhyme is expected, for example, in a poetic form, then I’m fine calling it a type of rhyme. Searching a bit, I’ve discovered that in addition to identity rhyme and identical rhyme, it can also be called an auto-rhyme, self-rhyme, or a null rhyme.
You also find them in some of Edward Lear’s limericks, like:
A lot of classical limericks do have identity rhymes in the first and fifth lines.
There is also homophonic rhyme, as illustrated in the Moxy Früvous lyrics posted above. Or the famous opening of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” with:
Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Which I guess would be technically a homonymic rhyme, as well.
Some people like to look down on rhymes like that as being “lazy” or something (I don’t know exactly what bee is up their bonnet), but I think it can be used quite well and is another “color” for a poet or lyricist to use. In the “War Pigs” case, I think it’s excellent.
As parodied by John Clarke:
Hahaha. That’s the kind of literary humor I enjoy!
Hey, Dylan did it with almost an entire line:
The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
mmm
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Haha. That’s a refrain of course. But, interestingly, he does do a sea/free/see rhyme in one of the verses, so there’s a bit of a delayed identical/homophonic rhyme there.
In a similar thread a few years ago, about bad or lazy rhymes, someone mentioned that rhyme, and someone else defended it as somewhat clever since they are two entirely different meanings for ‘masses’. I thought that explanation kind of held weight (or mass?).
The award for ultimate dumb lazy identical rhyme I think has to go to Kid Rock’s ‘All Summer Long’:
We were trying different things
We were smoking funny things
I would say it is lazy craft. Find a better rhyme or change the original word so they both work.
W H Auden could do it in a trice!
By the way, rhyming “Homer” with “Homer”
(chef’s kiss)
ETA: As to the song the OP mentions, I love that song and think it was way underplayed.
If it’s good enough for Emily Dickinson, it’s good enough for me. It’s such an odd thing to get all gatekeepy about. Why limit prosodic options?
Do we get similarly upset at Robert Frost of just repeating the penultimate line at the end of “Stopping by Woods…”?
I would still call it lazy. Emily Dickinson was hardly a skilled verse writer. Auden, Yeats, Pope, Tennyson, for example, wrote much better verse.
I will admit though, that I don’t like Dickinsons stuff at all. YMMV.
Well, this English lit major with a concentration in poetry thinks she’s fantastic. Poe does it in the Raven as well, as far as I remember. It’s another color of rhyme and can be used very effectively. There’s no bounds on poetry.
I hear some poetry doesn’t even rhyme at all! Mind blown. 