True Love
by Kanye West (featuring XXXTENTACION)

Album: Donda 2 (2022)
Charted: 31 22
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Songfacts®:

  • "True Love" sees Kanye West and the late XXXTENTACION discussing their troubled romances. The song starts with X's chorus, where he laments over the breakdown of his relationship with his ex-girlfriend Geneva Ayala.

    True love shouldn't be this complicated
    I thought I'd die in your arms, I thought I'd die in your


    X's heartbreak over their breakup is a major topic on his first two studio albums, 2017's 17 and 2018's ?.
  • According to X's producer, John Cunningham ,"True Love" is one of five songs the rapper recorded in 2018 but never finished. On June 18, 2018, four gunmen murdered XXXTENTACION as he left a car dealership in Miami, Florida.
  • Kanye West jumps in with the bridge and single verse, which he laid down four years later. He references issues between him and his estranged wife Kim Kardashian over their four children: North, Psalm, Saint, and Chicago West. The Chicago rapper doesn't like having to return the kids when his time with them is up, and he also criticizes the way they're being dressed.

    Wait, who got our kids in some "What are those?"
    Why they can't just be in Yeezys with the cargos?
    You know Nike don't like me, y'all takin' it far though
    At least have 'em in some Mike's, he played for Chicago


    The Yeezy founder is upset that his children no longer wear his clothing products and wonders if Kim is dressing them in Nike out of spite. If she is going to have them wear Nike, putting them in Jordans would be better, as Michael Jordan played with the Chicago Bulls.
  • West joins XXXTENTACION on the second chorus, during which he references XXXTENTACION's son, Gekyume. Ye reminds his children and Gekyume that both their fathers love them (Gekyume Onfroy was born eight months after the murder of his father).
  • West previously guested on XXXTENTACION's "One Minute" from the late rapper's posthumous 2018 album Skins.
  • "True Love" contains a drum break sampled from West's 2010 single "Runaway."
  • West recorded "True Love" for Donda 2, an album that contains many references to his estrangement from Kim Kardashian and disconnection from his children.
  • According to John Cunningham, he met West in January 2022 while he was working on Donda 2 and played him X's "True Love" demo. "At the time it was only X's vocal and my piano," the producer said, "but as soon as Ye heard it and started singing over the instrumental section in between X's choruses, it felt like the song was always meant to be finished by him."
  • West released "True Love" via Columbia Records in conjunction with the Hulu documentary Look at Me: XXXTentacion, which premiered on May 26, 2022. Though Donda had been available for three months, when West dropped "True Love" as a single on May 27, 2022, many fans heard the song for the first time. The only way to listen to the album is via West's own Stem Player or scouring the Internet for a bootleg.
  • West designed the cover art for the single. It sports notes from XXXTENTACION ("am I supposed to pretend to be heartless?," "love love love," and "a feeling you just can't explain") handwritten in a journal discovered by the late rapper's mother.
  • "True Love" appears during the closing credits of the Look At Me: XXXTentacion documentary. It's also the last track on the accompanying record, Look At Me: The Album.

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