Repetition is important in interpretation in my opinion. Whenever a writer repeats things, it's usually intended to be an emphasis or comparison. I find two interesting repetitions here. First, Kanye has had previous songs with the word "lights" in the title. "Flashing Lights" on Graduation, "Street Lights" in 808s & Heartbreak. In Street Lights, the lyrics are "Seems like street lights glowing/Happened to be just like moments passing in front of me". In this way, I think that lights, for Kanye, are metaphorical for an illumination of a specific moment, the way that a camera flash illuminates and captures a specific image. Accepting this, we can say that All of the Lights is the culmination of this idea, with specific examples of lights being explored before, in this song, Kanye speaks about all of them at once.
There's also a repetition in the lyrics of this song, a reference to "that ghetto university" is used twice. In the first verse, Kanye talks about a man who slaps his girlfriend, and ends up doing some jail time as a result. When he returns, there is another man in his bed with his girlfriend, and he assaults the man, saying, "I had to take him to that ghetto university". In the next verse, this man sees all the consequences of his actions. He is separated from his daughter, a woman he loved, and is unable to support either of them. He now says he "can't let [his daughter] grow up in that ghetto university". The salient point is that now he is afraid that his daughter will learn the lessons he learned from growing up in the environment he did, that caused him to make the mistakes he made. Looking back upon his regrets, he is desperate to ensure his daughter is not nurtured by the environment that encouraged the behaviours he chose.
I think this is the universal moment at the heart of this song. A man makes mistakes, regrets them, and then seeks to ensure the next generation doesn't make the mistakes he made. Truly, this is the struggle at the heart of the human condition, told through an urban lens.
Repetition is important in interpretation in my opinion. Whenever a writer repeats things, it's usually intended to be an emphasis or comparison. I find two interesting repetitions here. First, Kanye has had previous songs with the word "lights" in the title. "Flashing Lights" on Graduation, "Street Lights" in 808s & Heartbreak. In Street Lights, the lyrics are "Seems like street lights glowing/Happened to be just like moments passing in front of me". In this way, I think that lights, for Kanye, are metaphorical for an illumination of a specific moment, the way that a camera flash illuminates and captures a specific image. Accepting this, we can say that All of the Lights is the culmination of this idea, with specific examples of lights being explored before, in this song, Kanye speaks about all of them at once.
There's also a repetition in the lyrics of this song, a reference to "that ghetto university" is used twice. In the first verse, Kanye talks about a man who slaps his girlfriend, and ends up doing some jail time as a result. When he returns, there is another man in his bed with his girlfriend, and he assaults the man, saying, "I had to take him to that ghetto university". In the next verse, this man sees all the consequences of his actions. He is separated from his daughter, a woman he loved, and is unable to support either of them. He now says he "can't let [his daughter] grow up in that ghetto university". The salient point is that now he is afraid that his daughter will learn the lessons he learned from growing up in the environment he did, that caused him to make the mistakes he made. Looking back upon his regrets, he is desperate to ensure his daughter is not nurtured by the environment that encouraged the behaviours he chose.
I think this is the universal moment at the heart of this song. A man makes mistakes, regrets them, and then seeks to ensure the next generation doesn't make the mistakes he made. Truly, this is the struggle at the heart of the human condition, told through an urban lens.