Bully is the eleventh studio album and first visual album by American rapper Kanye West. West announced it during a Vultures 2 listening event in September 2024 and released multiple unfinished renditions in March 2025. Bully is a concept album solely produced by West. The current versions heavily incorporate AI-generated audio deepfakes, although West has expressed an intention to re-record the lyrics with his own vocals. The visual album features West's son, Saint, fighting New Japan Pro-Wrestling wrestlers with a mallet.
Bully was recorded as West became the subject of controversy for promoting hate speech, including making antisemitic statements and endorsing Nazism, on his X account. While Bully's current cover art features Saint, West also posted another cover featuring a Nazi swastika. West initially announced a release date of June 15, 2025, but surprise released multiple versions on X on March 18, asserting it remained a work in progress. Despite West's controversies, Bully has received positive reviews, with praise for its production.
Background and recording
Prior in 2024, West released two collaborative albums with fellow rapper Ty Dolla Sign as ¥$, Vultures 1 and Vultures 2.[1] Both albums received mixed to negative reviews from critics, with Vultures 2 particularly criticized for being released in an unfinished state, along with its alleged use of AI vocals.[2][3] Following their release, record producer and musician Digital Nas shared text messages from West indicating his intention to go into "full art studio mode",[4] which confirmed claims by the CEO of West's touring company, Channel Candy, that West had been working on solo material following his show in South Korea. On September 26, West posted a video on Instagram showing himself using an ASR-10 keyboard to create "Preacher Man", a song previously previewed at listening events.[5] An instrumental containing Bollywood samples was posted to West's Instagram page at the same time, which was later revealed to be the title track "Bully".[citation needed]
A snippet of unreleased track "This Is The Glory" was accidentally played during West's event in Haikou, causing many to speculate that the song may be featured on the album.[citation needed] Similar theories arose when a close associate of West, Mark Seekings, posted a photo on Instagram of the inside of his car, with an unreleased track with a name that is currently unknown playing on the dashboard.[citation needed]
During a Vultures 2 event on September 28 at the Wuyuan River Stadium in Haikou, China, West announced he was working on a new album titled Bully.[6] He previewed the tracks "Beauty and the Beast" and "Preacher Man", stating both were intended for the album. Both of the tracks were praised for their soulful production.[7] He continued to post several previews of the two tracks on Instagram and his YZY website in the following days.[8] American music journalistTouré reported West was living in Tokyo and that Bully would be a concept album inspired by his solitude, with West as its sole producer: "Traditionally, [Ye] is the product of a team—there are producers [and] writers helping him; he comes with the big ideas but there's others involved. [Ye] is gonna make [Bully] pretty much by himself. A fresh chapter in his life because in Tokyo he can be who he wants to be."[9][10][4][11] Despite this claim, multiple rappers and producers have taken photos of themselves in the same hotel room that West uses in recording sessions, such as Don Toliver, Malik Yusef, and Sean Leon.[citation needed] In his newsletter, Touré also stated the album was fully self-produced by West, who was also crafting it as a concept album.[9][10]
On October 18, West uploaded a music video for "Beauty and the Beast" to both Apple Music and his website.[citation needed] It consists of footage taken during the song's premiere at his show in Haikou, China.[citation needed] The Apple Music video was taken down on October 19, and an additional animated visual for the songs instrumental was uploaded to the website YZY ONE.[citation needed] On October 25, West released a merchandise collection for Bully and made the album available for physical pre-order.[12]
On February 3, 2025, in an interview with Justin LaBoy, West made several announcements regarding Bully stating it would utilize artificial intelligence technology for vocals and said it would release on June 15, coinciding with his daughter North's birthday.[13][14] On February 9, "Beauty and the Beast" was suddenly released on Yeezy.com, featuring new drums and vocals, though AI was still used on the vocals.[15]
On March 6, West announced the album would contain "antisemitic sounds".[16][17][18] He would also share an alternative cover featuring a swastika and previewing a song titled "World War 3".[19] In the song, he reaffirmed that he was "antisemitic, fully."[20] On March 20, West posted on X that "Melrose", a song featuring Playboi Carti and Ty Dolla Sign that was on the preview tracklist, would not be on the album.[21] He replied to a fan asking him to make it solo, where he said that he would "do a solo song to it", with the reason for him originally stating that "Melrose" would not be on the album likely stems from the fact that he felt betrayed that he wasn't on Carti's album, Music.[21]
Release
West leaked multiple incomplete renditions with different tracklists on March 18, 2025, via X.[22] On March 19, West shared links on X to three versions of Bully, all of which were accompanied by a black-and-white short film directed by Hype Williams and starring his son Saint.[23] He stated that the album was "not finished and half of the vocals [are] AI", promising to re-record the vocals because of his newfound hatred for AI. He expressed regret about using artificial intelligence in his music, stating "I actually hate AI now."[24] The rapper also added that he potentially may not release it on digital streaming platforms (DSPs), because "streams are fake and the French and Jewish record labels treat artists like prostitutes".[25][26][27]
On March 22, West published an earlier December version of the visual album on YouTube.[28] This version differed from the one released on March 19, which featured "Melrose" as the album closer.[25] Differences in the order of the tracklist were noted by media publications.[29][30]
The release of the different versions of Bully were accompanied by three visual iterations: a "screening version", a "post Hype version", and a "post post Hype version".[31] The films depicted Saint in a wrestling ring, fending off aggressors with a mallet.[31] Featured in these visuals are New Japan Pro-Wrestling wrestlers Yoh, Toru Yano, Tiger Mask, and El Desperado.[31]
Artwork and title
Alternative album cover
On October 23, 2024, West posted the album's cover on Instagram, stating it was shot by the Japanese photographer Daidō Moriyama.[13] The cover features a black-and-white image of West's son Saint wearing titanium grills, similar to those West has worn from January 2024 to February 2025.[32] On March 16, 2025, West tweeted "New Album Cover" with an image of a red Nazi swastika over an all-black background.[33] He also tweeted "New Sunday Service logo, accompanied by the Schutzstaffel insignia.[34] He soon after deleted these tweets.[34]
In his February interview with LaBoy, West revealed the title Bully is a reference to his 9-year-old son, Saint, who kicked a kid for being "weak", hence the name of the album.[14][35]
Critical reception
Billboard's Michael Saponara found that those willing to overlook West's controversies enjoyed Bully and praised it as evocative of his 2000s work, such as 808s and Heartbreak (2008).[36] Writing for GQ, Paul Thompson wrote that it brought him "no pleasure to report that Kanye West made a good Kanye West album," describing Bully as "not only the best collection of beats he's assembled in more than a decade, but a rich, warm, even optimistic record that feels safely cloistered from the internet, the world, even its primary author."[37] Thompson favorably compared its production to West's singles "Only One" (2014) and "FourFiveSeconds" (2015).[37]
"Last Breath" was titled "Spanish" in a later December version of the album. West released a separate unfinished version featuring vocals by Peso Pluma through his X account
"Bully" was titled "Serotonin" in a later December version of the album
There were multiple December versions of the album; at least 3 released through his X account. Fans have come to call the most recent releases – released as the Post Post[sic] Hype Version and Post Hype Version on West's X account – as the "December versions" (and these are different from one another despite fans grouping them as one single version).
There was also the Screening Version, a file that was from December and labeled as such – this one was uploaded to YouTube and West's X account – fans have mistakenly referred to this as the "November version." This screening version had three separate versions to choose from on his X account, but the one labeled December was chosen as the final YouTube upload. This is not the "December version" fans refer to, but it was created in December.
Versions of album: Post Post[sic] Hype Version (1 file, labeled December); Post Hype Version (2 files, labeled December); Screening Version (3 files, the final file uploaded also labeled December).
"This One Here" was referred to by fans as "Showtime" before its name was revealed
"Untitled" is not an official title and contains noise from the visual album.
Notes
↑ West shared multiple versions of Bully on Twitter on March 18, 2025. One of these versions was later uploaded to YouTube on March 22, 2025.
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