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When people say they miss “the old Kanye,” they often mean the version of Kanye West that was synonymous with soul samples. The Chicago rapper has sampled many old songs, both popular and under the radar, throughout his career. In 2013, he landed one of his most crucial songs yet with ‘Bound 2’, the closing track on his Yeezus album.

That project saw Kanye dive into industrial and punk rap, but the final song was a return to familiar territory. ‘Bound 2’, produced by Ye, Che Pope, Eric Danchild, No ID, and Noah Goldstein, peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 thanks to its undeniably catchy soul sample. All credit goes to the 1971 song ‘Bound’ by the Ponderosa Twins Plus One.

Super producer Rick Rubin, who was brought in to strip down Yeezus, revealed the song was written without the sample until being added at the last minute. “The song had kind of a lot of R&B music in it. And Kanye gave marching orders of, ‘Take out anything you want, but don’t add. Just take away,'” he recalled to Rolling Stone. “Like, ‘OK.’ And before that, we listened to the sample together and thought, ‘Hmm, maybe there’s a way to integrate this into the song.'”

Once they decided on including the sample, they worked on reducing the song by taking out elements of the production. “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,” he said. “I was thinking like Alan Vega and Suicide, that kind of noise-synth minimal vibe.”

He continued, “So that was the idea behind the chorus: Take it from this sort of R&B thing and turn it into this kind of post-punk, edge thing. And the lyrics he wrote were so good and funny. It just turned into a really good record. The sample is so good.”

Despite the success of ‘Bound 2’, the lead singer of The Ponderosa Twins, Ricky Spicer, filed a lawsuit against Kanye, claiming his vocals were used without permission. The suit was settled in 2015, with paperwork registered to a New York court discontinuing the litigation. However, it’s unknown how much money was paid.

During an interview with The Breakfast Club, Kanye claimed ‘Bound 2’ was the only actual music on his Yeezus album. “My last album was a protest to music,” he said. “I was like, ‘I’ma take my ball and go home. If y’all ain’t gonna let me play the way I wanna play or do clothes or do this, I’m gonna start shootin’ the ball real slow, might be at the free throw for a long time.'”

He added, “That was my whole album. The album don’t even got no music. I just let y’all have a little music on there on ‘Bound [2]’ but that was it.” Aside from Kanye, Tyler, The Creator also sampled ‘Bound’ for his 2019 song ‘A Boy Is a Gun’, which appeared on his IGOR album.