Kanye West's Kim Okudれの Romance: The Songs Before the Obsession crystallizes a Turbulent Creative Reckoning

From the shadows of Fleetwood Mac’s "Kim” to the fevered beats of "All Falls Down," Kanye West’s exploration of Kim Kardashian—rogue icon, cultural lightning rod, and muse—began long before the romance formally unfolded. His 2016–2017 corpus of songs surrounding the name reveals a musician grappling with infatuation as both inspiration and demon, laying the emotional and sonic groundwork for one of the most scrutinized unions of modern celebrity. More than mere fashionable curiosity, the tracks prior to any public declaration expose a deep psychological immersion: songs that dissect obsession not as spectacle, but as raw, unfiltered introspection.

At the core of this narrative lies Kanye’s presidency of sound, where every lyric, beat, and sonic texture is a clue to the complexity of his fixation. The songs released between “Kim” (2010) and the deeper emotional terrain of “All Falls Down” (2016) function as a private journal—raw, confessional, and relentlessly focused. Rather than follow protocol with calculated public gestures, Kanye chose immersion: drafting melodies during late nights, weaving Kim’s energy into abstract metaphors, and layering restless beats that mirror the volatility of being entranced by a living myth.

The absence of romantic announcement before "before the romance" is deliberate—a filtering mechanism that preserves authenticity over entertainment.

The Sonic Landscape: Songs as Emotional Blueprints

The period from 2010 to 2016 yields a mosaic of tracks that collectively paint Kanye’s obsession not as a single infatuation, but as a recursive cycle of longing, projecting, and questioning. — - “Wild Flows” (2010): Opens the arc with a stormy vocal delivery and throbbing drum patterns, blending admiration with anxiety. The opening line — *“I’m flowin’ through the trace of her name”* — captures the compulsion Kanye felt, caught between reverence and entropy.

- “Good Food” (2010): Here, futuristic beats meet cryptic lyrics like *“She eats the silence,”* merging surreal imagery with emotional intensity, reflecting obsession as both hunger and reverence. - “Heart misaligned” (2013, featured in *Yeezus* era twins): Though produced under the album’s industrial lens, its raw vulnerability and repetitive vocal vaulting reveal inner turmoil—hints of emotional mirroring beneath the aesthetic rigor. - “Top Too” (featuring Kid Cudi, 2012): A collaboration brimming with urgency, layered synths and fractured lyrics (*“You top too, but I’m stackin’ up”*) suggest not admiration alone, but a psychological competition rooted in kinship through rivalry.

- “I Abraham Lincoln” (2016, post-Kim focus but thematically linked): Though not explicitly about her, the song’s lyrical persona explores identity, authority, and myth-making—qualities he later channels in narrating his relationship with Kardashian. These tracks form a sonic timeline where obsession evolves: from awe-struck reverence in early works, to fragmented introspection, then increasingly abstract meditations on presence and absence.

More than just stylistic choices, the production and vocal delivery embody Kanye’s psychological state.

The dissonant drops in “Wild Flows” and “All Falls Down” (2016) mirror emotional turbulence—unstable yet compelling, much like the entangled feelings toward Kim Kardashian. Producers like Greg Kurstin and Kanye himself layered textures that oscillate between warmth and alienation,