June 19th, 2013 11:58am

Loving With Nobody To Love

Kanye West “Bound 2”

“Bound 2,” the final track on Yeezus, is the one song on the record that feels like something that could have been on one of his first three albums. It’s also one of the album’s most emotionally knotty cuts – it seems to be, in its own way, a show of affection for Kim Kardashian, but half the lyrics seem either passive-aggressive, dismissive, or openly skeptical about the relationship. But still, somehow, the song feels genuinely sweet. Maybe it’s the self-deprecating tone in West’s voice when he jokes about not remembering how they met, or admitting that he has a terrible track record with women and owning up to his “walking around always mad reputation.” But most of this sweetness comes from the other voices on the track – the hook from Ponderosa Twins Plus One’s “Bound,” the cute Brenda Lee “uh-huh, honey” sample, Charlie Wilson singing “I know you’re tired of loving with nobody to love.” The most vulnerable and sentimental thoughts on Yeezus are sung by other people – he pulls the same trick on “Send It Up,” “New Slaves,” “Hold My Liquor,” and “I’m In It.”

I don’t know if this song is actually about Kim; I’m just kinda guessing that it is. But there’s something in this song that vaguely reminds me of Nirvana’s “All Apologies,” at least in the sense that both songs share this sentiment that boils down to: If you commit to me, I will inevitably poison everything. There’s a lot more guilt and empathy in “All Apologies,” and part of what makes “Bound 2” so odd and difficult to parse is that West seems to want to ruin things. So instead of equating marriage with burial, Kanye thinks of it as a suffocation: “When a real n***a hold you down, you supposed to drown.” This is the core of Kanye, at least on his later albums – a man who is proud of even the things he loathes about himself.