“You know what season it is,” Ye boasts on Bully track “King.” Yeah, Yeezy season has returned, but it feels different this time around for the mercurial artist born Kanye West.
A typical Kanye album rollout is filled with noise feeding the machine and algorithm, but now that chaos has turned to radio silence. It’s about time the music became the sole focus, as antics have muddied the waters and served as a distraction from his work in the past.
West’s first solo album in more than four years also comes with a brand-new label partnership with Gamma. Ye reunited with an old friend, Larry Jackson, who serves as the independent label’s founder, as they go back to Jackson’s time working as an executive at Apple Music in the mid-2010s.
At this point, no Ye album arrives on the traditional midnight ET release schedule, keeping fans on edge as they repeatedly refresh streaming services. Bully finally hit DSPs early Saturday (March 28), following Thursday night’s (March 26) listening parties across the U.S. (Ye attended L.A.’s).
Bully is more polished and cohesive than his work in recent years. Ye limited the half-baked ideas and unfinished tracks, thankfully threw away the AI-slop vocals and got back to his roots by chopping up soulful samples on the production side.
It’s a versatile crew of collaborators joining West on Bully, including underground rap favorite Nine Vicious, the legendary CeeLo Green, frequent collaborators like Travis Scott, Don Toliver, Vultures running mate Ty Dolla $ign, Peso Pluma and Ye’s music director André Troutman, who helped steer the ship for Bully‘s sonic direction.
Ye is still working his way back from the damaging string of antisemitic remarks and turbulent behavior that persisted over the course of the last few years. He’s met with rabbis and taken out full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal to apologize to the Jewish and Black communities for his actions, as he seeks forgiveness and looks to be entering a new chapter of life.
Pulling on a mix of Yeezy eras with one eye toward the future, Bully‘s arrival is a step in the right direction for Ye. Bully funnels into a pair of comeback concerts at SoFi Stadium set for April 1 and April 3, which will serve as West’s first U.S. stadium shows in nearly five years.
Here are all 18 tracks from Bully ranked.
