The two words hell and home are used in the same sentence at the end of the verse. By doing this, the context of the song, the meaning shows that even a place that you are supposed to love and cherish can be as bad that you feel it is demented and god-forsaken place. The general emotion throughout the song is sadness, because you feel bad for each of the girls and the situations they are in. The song can even make you feel a little empathy. As well as feeling bad for the girls in the song, you also start to understand where they are coming from, with wanting to just escape the situation that you’re in, because you feel like if you stay, it will only continue to get worse. Another poetic device that he uses is rhyme. Rhyming is often used in hip-hop and rap songs to make the lyrics flow together. The last word in every line rhymes with the word in the previous line, but only during the verses. The only parts that do not rhyme in “Runaway Love” are the hook and the outro. [I attached a copy of the lyrics so you would be able to refer to the song throughout reading this analysis.] Ludacris also uses imagery to make his song feel more powerful. Imagery helps the listener to relate with the characters in the song because they can see in their mind what is taking place. “Mama is on drugs getting high up in the kitchen” is an example of the imagery that is being used because the listener can picture the little girl sitting alone in her room, while her mom is doing drugs in their kitchen. This makes the listener sympathize for the little girl, Lisa, because she is only nine years old and her mother is too busy getting high to take care of her. Ludacris is able to make his listeners grasp how important it is to pay attention to signs of abuse so that adolescents do not have to feel like “hell is a place called home.”
Ludacris makes his listeners feel like they are in the same position as the girls who are in his song, which in return, makes them aware of child abuse. He not only makes his listeners aware of child abuse through his songs, but I learned that he also has a program called “The Ludacris Foundation.” It was created for “helping youth help themselves.” The foundation contains five different programs that are all focused on helping children in our country. Finally, at the end of “Runaway Love”, Ludacris comforts the girls to make them feel like someone out there cares for them. His Foundation also helps children realize that someone out there would like to help them because not everyone has to struggle to get through life. Featuring Mary J. Blige in both the song and music video was a positive asset because of what she went through. She unexpectedly made a painful deeply buried revelation to VH1's "Behind the Music" recently, saying she'd been sexually
The image painted in the video shows that Ludacris is portraying a very serious atmosphere and wants his listeners to relate to the characters. The message his is trying to convey is strong: he wants his listeners grasp the signs of abuse so that adolescents would not feel like “hell is a place called home”. The song ends with Ludacris saying “…I can only image what you're going through ladies, sometimes I feel like running away myself, so do me a favor right now and close your eyes, and picture us running away together, when we come back everything is gonna be okay, Open your eyes......” to comfort the girls and let them know that someone out there cares.