Kanye West’s "Never Let Me Down" Annotated by Michael Bolton on Genius

Kanye West's "Never Let Me Down" Annotated by Michael Bolton on Genius

Photo by Erez Avissar

As others like Grizzly Bear, Rick Rubin, and novelist Michael Chabon have recently done, Michael Bolton has taken to the annotation site Genius to add his thoughts, as XXL points out. Bolton marked up Kanye West‘s “Never Let Me Down”, a The College Dropout cut that samples Blackjack’s “Maybe It’s the Power of Love”, which Bolton sings lead on. Read his annotation below:

When Kanye and Jay-Z’s publishing reps reached out to me about clearing this sample, I was surprised and flattered

I wrote this song in the early 80s. If you told me back then that 20 years later it would have a second life in the work of two great hip hop artists, I would have called you crazy!

Happy as I was, I wanted to make sure that I was cool with the content of the song before giving the go-ahead. So I had them send me the lyrics. I read them, and I thought “I love this. It’s great. What a positive message.”

And the song turned out beautifully — I’m totally happy with it

Listen to “Never Let Me Down”:

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