Marcel Winatschek

Topless on a Motorcycle, Somewhere in America

The setup for Bound 2 is Kanye rapping about love in front of what looks like stock footage of the American West while Kim Kardashian sits topless on a motorcycle and the wind does its thing. It’s cheap-looking and completely deliberate—a green-screen devotional, mythological and horny in equal measure. He unveiled it on Ellen, which is its own kind of statement.

The song itself is genuinely tender. It samples Charlie Wilson, it’s built on warmth and nostalgia, and underneath the braggadocio there’s something that sounds like actual longing. Then the video happens and all of that gets buried under Kim’s chest, which is—to be clear—extraordinary. But the distance between what the song is trying to say and what the video actually communicates is so vast it loops back around to being kind of perfect.

Another artist would’ve hired a real director and made something polished. Kanye wanted exactly this: cheap, divine, explicit, sincere. A love letter that doubles as softcore. The kitchen sink line lands with all the subtlety of a freight train, which is presumably the point. Very stylish, Mr. West.