This is nowhere near Kanye West's best video. Touch the Sky, Runaway, Good Morning, Welcome to Heartbreak are all incredible, funny, touching and represent his musical vision. Then the video for Bound 2 comes out. Honestly the Dean and Jeff singing "Kiss from a Rose" could have doubled as a video for this. The hell, Kanye? His concerts and whatnot are all very strong visually. Then this comes along-- greenscreens are fun! Kim Kardashian is hot! Kanye likes flannel!
Bound 2 comes after 9 songs of abrasive, vulgar material that's meant to shock, offend, divide, etc. Then this, hey look, Ye's using soul beats! Charlie Wilson is doing vocals! Kanye is actually happy! The video takes this up to eleven. Like, Kanye is so happy with Kim that he needs to pull out cliches of love and lust through bombastic imagery and motorcycles.
That goes into another theme: Kanye's been weirdly obsessed with Americana/biker imagery with his Yeezus Tour and its merchandise. These backgrounds are what you'd expect from white people in roadside bars singing karaoke. It's weird to see someone like Kanye do this. He's flipping everything around, from having songs like "Black Skinhead" to "New Slaves." This is clearly the stupidest example of race relations improving I've ever seen.
And then there's the fact that he fucking premiered it on Ellen. Who's Kanye's target audience? Pitchfork hipsters at this point. This isn't what they want. I'm confused as hell. I was laughing and thinking "is this serious" the whole way through. Imagine your average housewife who has an image of Kanye as a hardened thug who sees this. Maybe the dude's just trying to soften his image.
Is it genius? Probably not. Is Kanye blinded by a strange love? Absolutely. This is weird for me, to see my current favorite artist slip down the rabbit hole only he could create. But I like the song and love the album, so one weird as fuck video doesn't bother me.
Final Score: Kanye/10
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