It’s possible that we didn’t, in fact, want the old Kanye. Bully, the 12th studio album from Ye, né Kanye West, feels in some ways like a greatest-hits compilation: There are soul samples flipped with the alchemic acumen that made Ye one of the main architects of the past 20 years of popular music. There are crisp, stadium-ready melodies and polished, albeit just serviceable, hooks. Yet the project feels lifeless overall, as though the Ye whom fans might remember, like the times he represents, is indeed never coming back.
Bully arrives after the much embattled Vultures, which Ye struggled to get on streaming platforms while still managing to deliver a Number One song in “Carnival.” Vultures saw Ye fully on the defensive, following his setting fire to every personal and professional bridge he had with a spree of antisemitic tirades and antics — all of which is documented in the documentary In Whose Name?, no less. After going on to release a song with the hook “Heil Hitler” (which incidentally played a role in the recent viral fame of “looksmaxxing” proponent Clavicular), and getting booted from Shopify for selling merch with swastikas, Ye had successfully shut himself out of mainstream conversation. He continued touring internationally to muted fanfare, and existed as something of a pariah in the States.
Over time, however, the culture on the ground became just as noxious as Ye’s most unhinged instincts. Appalling as they were, Ye’s rants now match up to everyday commentary on Musk-era Twitter. And he’s been on something of an image rehabilitation tour. In January, in an interview with Vanity Fair, Ye described ongoing complications from the 2002 car accident that famously left his jaw wired shut — the impetus for “Through the Wire,” and arguably Ye’s entire career. Coupled with a well-documented battle with bipolar disorder, it was enough for some to squint and almost begin to see Ye sympathetically.
This is a blessing and a curse for the music on Bully, which is easily some of the best-sounding Kanye has made in years. The album opener, “King,” is a standout and sounds something like Yeezus with smoother edges. Ye raps almost convincingly about the past few years of controversy, falling just short of saying anything impactful. Just before the song can reach any kind of emotional crest, we’re thrust into the lackluster “This a Must,” which rides a forgettable trap beat with even less inspired lyrics.
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“Father,” with Travis Scott, offers another bright spot, the pair’s longstanding chemistry still intact, delivering a pitch-perfect 2010s banger sure to scratch the itch of those yearning for the days of 2016. Elsewhere, like on “All the Love,” Ye delivers some of his most melodically impressive work in recent memory, landing somewhere between his 808s-era melancholy and Life of Pablo extravagance. “Punch Drunk,” “Whatever Works,” and “I Can’t Wait” all lean into the soul-sampling ethos of Ye’s early releases, to admirable effect, and a red-hot Don Toliver arrives on “Circles” for a clear-eyed attempt at the kind of radio hit that once defined Ye’s oeuvre.
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Last year, demos from Bully were leaked online featuring “Bully,” “Highs and Lows,” and “Preacher Man,” which is the album’s most recognizable single. The track takes Ye’s flair for cinematics — think of the music videos for “Runaway” or “Bound 2” — and fires on all cylinders. So much so, in fact, that rumors began swirling after the Bully leaks that Ye had been using AI to construct the album. The rumors became so widespread that, upon releasing the album last week, Ye himself had to clarify that he had not used AI.
The specifics, however, matter less than the feeling. Whether or not Ye used AI to make Bully, the album nonetheless feels like decades of his music fed into a computer program. While fans would have surely loved to get any of these songs over the past five years in lieu of the chaos of 2020s-era Ye, there’s still an emptiness at the heart of Bully. The lines are all too clean, easily traceable, the opposite of what has made Ye a compelling artist for so long. In a way, it is his most human album to date, inasmuch as it proves that even stars as bright as Ye begin to dim with time.
