About “Bound 2”

As opposed to the industrial, electronic influences found throughout Yeezus, this warm soulful track sees Kanye “Bound 2” his partner, Kim Kardashian. Reminiscent of West’s earlier work, the soul instrumental and background vocals are sampled from the Ponderosa Twins Plus One’s 1971 song “Bound,” whereas the memorable ‘uh-huh, honey’ comes from the intro to Brenda Lee’s 1959 record “Sweet Nothin’s.”

Kanye first shared a short 13-second snippet of this song on his website together with the official album cover casing for Yeezus. Along with “New Slaves” and “Black Skinhead,” “Bound 2” was one of three singles to be previewed before the album’s release. However, it was actually one of the last tracks to be finished—three weeks before the album’s last possible delivery date, Kanye enlisted Rick Rubin to help finish the song. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Rubin recalled:

The whole song was written without that main sample; it was a last-minute thing. The song had kind of a lot of R&B music in it. […] So we started by getting the sample to work in the song, and then taking out as much stuff as we could, and then in the chorus reducing what was this whole musical thing, just this sort of one ugly, distorted bass note. I was thinking like Alan Vega and Suicide, that kind of noise-synth minimal vibe.

“Bound 2” peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100. The original, pre-Rick Rubin version of “Bound,” titled “Bound 1,” was premiered by producer Hudson Mohawke at a concert in 2014.