Cuck (album)

Last updated

In a Perfect World
WW3 album cover by Kanye West.jpg
Studio album by
RecordedFebruary–June 2025
Genre
Length30:11
Label YZY
Producer
Kanye West chronology
Bully
(2025)
In a Perfect World
(TBA)
Singles from In a Perfect World
  1. "WW3"
    Released: March 26, 2025
  2. "Cousins"
    Released: April 21, 2025
  3. "Heil Hitler"
    Released: May 8, 2025

In a Perfect World [1] is the upcoming thirteenth studio album by American rapper Kanye West, intended to be released under his alias Ye. Media personality DJ Akademiks announced the album under the title WW3 during a live stream on April 2, 2025, a week after the track of the same name was released as a single on the 26th of March. The album would soon be renamed to Cuck, with the stylization CUKKK being considered during production.

Contents

Amid the surprise release of demos for his preceding visual album Bully the month prior, West caused controversy by making antisemitic statements, supporting Nazism, and posting offensive remarks [2] —as well as revealing childhood incest involving his cousin on his Twitter account. The latter remark tied into the album's second single, "Cousins", released on the 21st of April. The third single, "Heil Hitler", was released on the 8th of May.

American rapper Dave Blunts, who first met West in February 2025, has been cited as the album's sole songwriter by multiple sources, including West himself. Blunts makes several uncredited guest appearances on the album, and contributes vocals on the song "Bianca". Quadwoofer and Sheffmade, two producers who have heavily collaborated with Blunts, are the album's primary producers. [3] Che Pope, Digital Nas, and Templecitygrounds also helped in producing the album, alongside West himself.

An unfinished version of the album was leaked on May 18, 2025, following a charity group buy; the proceeds of the leak were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Blunts has also published multiple reference tracks that he created for the album online. [4] On June 22, West posted to Twitter that he may be changing the album name from "Cuck" to "InaPerfectWorld". [5] He later posted "In a Perfect World", implying it was the new title for the album. [6]

Background

February: West meets Dave Blunts

In February 2025, West met Dave Blunts and they started working on an album together. [7] According to West, he and Blunts would spend hours talking to each other, and Blunts would write three songs a day based off their conversations. [8] Regarding the creation of album track "Cousins", Blunts recalled:

"Cousins" was one of [my songs] that got picked. I really liked that song, because he had told me about the situation with him and his cousin, and I could tell that the song was very freeing for him when I made it. I believe that he chose me to write songs because I have a blunt approach to it, and that's the way that this song needed to be. I mean, it happened exactly like I said in the song, no double entendres. Just, like, "I gave him head." [9]

On a June 2025 episode of the Dope As Usual podcast, Blunts would give several more insights into his work on the album. According to him, West asked him to write the entirety of Cuck only a day after they met, a meeting arranged by West's agent. Blunts stated that he usually spent 20-30 minutes on each reference track, but once rewrote a track upwards of twenty times at West's request. He based his lyrics off of phone calls he'd have with West (which he described as being "sporadic" in frequency), as well as tweets that West was making at the time. [3]

Blunts has repeatedly denied that the lyrical content of Cuck is antisemitic, describing the album as being "about one man going between hurt, betrayal and pain and he's putting that shit down..." [10]

March–May: Album rollout and singles

On March 6, West stated that his upcoming music would feature an "antisemitic sound". [11] [12] [13] On March 16, he posted images of a Nazi swastika and the sig runes of the Schutzstaffel , claiming them to be his "new album cover" and "new Sunday Service logo", respectively. [14]

West first teased the song "WW3" on March 15 on his Twitter account. [15] Prior to its release, Blunts and streamer Adin Ross had reacted to the song; the latter initially expressed negative feelings, [16] but would later seem to enjoy the song when reacting to it on stream with rapper Kodak Black. [17] West released "WW3" as a single on March 26. [16] On March 30, DJ Akademiks held an interview in which West wore a black Ku Klux Klan-inspired outfit and made further controversial remarks, including stating that he regrets having children with his ex-wife Kim Kardashian. He made negative remarks about various other celebrities, including Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Playboi Carti, Kendrick Lamar, and the late Virgil Abloh. [18] [19] The following day, West released the music video to "WW3" on Twitter. The video contains a repurposed scene from the American television miniseries Roots alongside graphic sexual imagery featuring interracial sex and footage of a KKK gathering. [20]

On April 2, DJ Akademiks announced that the album, initially titled WW3, would be released the next day, and shared the track listing. [21] Akademiks also previewed the track "Bianca"; the lyrics of the track concern West's separation from his wife Bianca Censori, pleading with her to "come back". [22] When the album failed to drop on April 3, West revealed the album cover, which depicts a male and female Klan member wearing white and red KKK-inspired outfits, respectively, posing in front of a stack of hay bales. [23] The album cover is an edited version of the 2015 photo The wedding of two members of the KKK in a barn in rural America by Peter van Agtmael. [24]

The speech by Adolf Hitler that West sampled in "Heil Hitler"

On April 21, West announced that he was changing the title of the album to Cuck (in popular culture, short for cuckold), which he said represented "[his] whole style". [25] He released the music video for the second single called "Cousins" the same day in a tweet, with part of the text reading "This song is called COUSINS about my cousin that's locked in jail for life for killing a pregnant lady a few years after I told him we wouldn't 'look at dirty magazines together' anymore." [26] The track contains lyrics discussing West's experience having an incestuous relationship with a male cousin as a child and his recreational use of nitrous oxide. [10] The music video consists of low quality footage drawn from home media, TV commercials, and pornography. [27]

On May 7, West stated on Twitter that he was uploading the third single called "Heil Hitler". On May 8, he released the music video for the single, featuring people draped in animal skins singing the chorus and a sample from a speech by Adolf Hitler. [28] [29] West would subsequently release the song on SoundCloud and Scrybe. West then stated on May 9 that the song was "banned by all digital streaming platforms". [30] [31] An instrumental version titled "The Heil Symphony" was uploaded in its place on May 14. [32] [33]

Leak

An iTunes screenshot of the album's leak, including the metadata ITunes screenshot of Cuck leak.png
An iTunes screenshot of the album's leak, including the metadata

On May 18, 2025, the album was leaked in its entirety after a $999 [34] charity group buy for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum via the messaging site Discord. The leaked album files contained derogatory messaging towards West in its media and metadata as a form of protest, including listing Blunts as the song artist instead of West, listing "AI" and "1945" as its genre and date respectively, and replacing the cover with a 1994 picture of West wearing an antifascist shirt with the title "Fuck Nazis" and a subtitle—"50 year old loser promoting fascism and hate speech"—overlaid onto it. [35]

West acknowledged the leak on Twitter, clarifying that the song "Uncle" was no longer part of the album, and its lyrics were not related to his wife Censori. [36] [37] He would also state the following regarding its leak:

"Somebody got a drive and threw it on YouTube and said this is CUCK

What I love about getting blocked on DSPs and having songs leaked and shows cancelled is...

It proves everything I'm saying and why I'm saying" [38] [35]

May-June: Post-antisemitism

On May 20, "WW3" was removed from all streaming services, followed by West tweeting that he was "done with antisemitism" following a FaceTime call with his children on May 22. He asked God to "forgive me for the pain I've caused" and said that he forgave those who caused him pain. [39] He later re-uploaded the song, with new black cover art and censoring of the words "Nazi", "Swastikas", "Hitler", "Antisemitic" and "Mein Kampf". [40] "The Heil Symphony" was also taken down, then re-uploaded with black cover art and the updated name "Hit Symphony". [41] [42] On May 31, a song titled "Hallelujah" was uploaded to YouTube before being added to streaming services. The song itself, which is an edited version of "Heil Hitler", censored the phrase "Heil Hitler" and replaced it with "Hallelujah", with "all my niggas Nazi's" being changed to "all my niggas got me". The only other censored word is "Nazi" during the line "So I became a Nazi yeah, bitch I'm the villain".

On June 22, West posted to X that he was thinking about changing the album's name from "CUKKK" to "IN A PERFECT WORLD", implying that "CUKKK" was another title for the album. [5] [1] He later posted "IN A PERFECT WORLD", implying it as the new title for the album. [6] Blunts would also update the caption of an image of him and West on Instagram, changing it from "CUCKS" to "IN A PERFECT WORLD" to reflect the name change. [43]

Track listing

All songs are reportedly written by Dave Blunts. [10] The following refers to the May 18, 2025 leak; [44] it is unclear if this will be the final track listing for the album.

In a Perfect World track listing
No.TitleProducer(s)Length
1."WW3"
  • Ye
  • Quadwoofer
  • Sheffmade
  • Templecitygrounds
1:45
2."Cosby" 2:30
3."Diddy Free" 2:58
4."Dirty Magazines" 1:27
5."Jesus" 1:24
6."Bianca" 1:56
7."Cousins"
2:32
8."Virgil" 2:04
9."Uncle" 1:37
10."Free My Kids" 1:50
11."Heil Hitler"
  • Quadwoofer
  • Sheffmade
1:37
12."Gas Chambers" 1:55
13."Hitler Ye Jesus" 2:06
14."Jared" 2:54
15."Nitrous" 1:37
Total length:30:11

Notes

Sample credits

Credits and personnel

References

  1. 1 2 Nevares, Gabriel Bras (June 22, 2025). "Kanye West Hopes To "Manifest Love" By Changing His Album's Controversial Title". HotNewHipHop. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
  2. Strauss, Matthew (February 7, 2025). "Kanye West, Amid Return to Public Eye, Praises Hitler, Diddy, and Chris Brown in Hate-Filled X Rant". Pitchfork. Retrieved June 21, 2025.
  3. 1 2 Dope As Usual Podcast (June 17, 2025). Dave Blunts Weight Loss Journey, Putting Down The Cup & much more! | DOPE AS USUAL Podcast . Retrieved June 19, 2025 via YouTube.
  4. Paul, Bryson "Boom" (June 14, 2025). "Dave Blunts Previews 50 Cent Diss Track After The Mogul Trolled Kanye West". HotNewHipHop. Retrieved June 21, 2025.
  5. 1 2 @kanyewest (June 22, 2025). "I may change the album name from CUKKK to IN A PERFECT WORLD Manifest love" (Tweet) via Twitter.
  6. 1 2 West, Kanye (June 22, 2025). "IN A PERFECT WORLD". Twitter.
  7. Horvath, Zachary (April 15, 2025). "Kanye West Claims He & Dave Blunts Are 'Almost Finished' With 'WW3' Album". HotNewHipHop . Retrieved April 19, 2025.
  8. Brown, Preezy (April 24, 2025). "Ye Confirms This Rising Rap Star Ghostwrote His New 'Cuck' Album". VIBE.com. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  9. Rajagopal, Mekala (May 9, 2025). "The First Rule of Touring With Dave Blunts? No Shitting On the Bus". Interview Magazine. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  10. 1 2 3 Blake, Cole (April 22, 2025). "Kanye West Reveals Dave Blunts Wrote The Entirety Of His New Album, "Cuck"". HotNewHipHop . Retrieved April 22, 2025.
  11. Saponara, Michael (March 6, 2025). "After Years of Antisemitic Rhetoric, Ye Now Declares 'My New Sound Called Antisemitic'". Billboard. Retrieved March 7, 2025.
  12. Winslow, Mike (March 7, 2025). "Ye Says His New Album Has "Antisemitic Sound"". AllHipHop. Retrieved March 7, 2025.
  13. Nevares, Gabriel Bras (March 6, 2025). "Kanye West Declares New Album "Bully" Has That "Antisemitic Sound"". HotNewHipHop. Retrieved March 7, 2025.
  14. Nevares, Gabriel Bras (March 16, 2025). "Kanye West Unveils Nazi-Inspired Logos For New Album "Bully" Cover Art & Sunday Service". HotNewHipHop. Retrieved March 16, 2025.
  15. Qadir, Tabasum (March 25, 2025). "What Is Ye's 'World War 3' All About? Why Are Fans Going Utterly Bonkers Over It?". Netflix Junkie. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  16. 1 2 Gee, Maddie (March 31, 2025). Ye Drops "WW3" Song as Lawsuit News Breaks (Report). Rap TV. Retrieved April 2, 2025.
  17. Blake, Cole (April 13, 2025). "Kanye West Shows Love To Kodak Black & Adin Ross For Praising His "WW3" Single". HotNewHipHop. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  18. Bennett, Jessica (April 3, 2025). Ye Leans Into Controversy With Potential Tracklist For New Album 'WW3' (Report). Vibe Magazine. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  19. Saponera, Michael (March 31, 2025). 8 Things We Learned From Ye's Interview With DJ Akademiks (Report). Billboard. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  20. Cowen, Trace (April 1, 2025). Ye's "WW3" Video Features Repurposed 'Roots' Scene, Depicts Woman Being Whipped (Report). Complex. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  21. Blake, Cole (April 3, 2025). Kanye West Is Supposedly Dropping A New "WW3" Album Today (Report). HotNewHipHop. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  22. Dolak, Kevin (April 3, 2025). Kanye West Raps About Split With Wife Bianca Censori on His New Album, 'WW3' (Report). The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  23. Fisher, Caroline (April 3, 2025). Kanye West Unveils KKK-Inspired Cover For Upcoming Album "WW3" (Report). HotNewHipHop. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  24. Cassady, Daniel (May 2, 2025). "Magnum Photographer Says Kanye West's Use of KKK Image on 'Cuck' Album Cover Was 'Unauthorized'". ARTnews. Retrieved May 3, 2025.
  25. Blake, Cole (April 21, 2025). "Kanye West Bizarrely Changes His Album Title To 'Cuck'". HotNewHipHop . Retrieved April 22, 2025.
  26. "Ye continues to sound off after alleging sex acts with a male cousin. But this time it's about his kids". Los Angeles Times. April 22, 2025. Retrieved April 25, 2025.
  27. Hook, Ellie (April 24, 2025). "Kanye West opens up about his sexuality after bombshell incest confession". The Mirror US. Retrieved May 16, 2025.
  28. Moore, Sam (May 8, 2025). "Kanye West Drops Video For 'Heil Hitler'". HipHopDX. Archived from the original on May 9, 2025. Retrieved May 10, 2025.
  29. 1 2 Sadler, Armon (May 8, 2025). "Ye Shares Militant Music Video For "Heil Hitler"". VIBE Magazine. Retrieved May 8, 2025.
  30. Saponara, Michael (May 8, 2025). "Ye Claims His 'Hitler' Single Is Banned From 'All Digital Streaming Platforms'". Billboard. Retrieved May 8, 2025.
  31. Lapin, Andrew. "Self-described Nazi rapper Kanye West releases new song titled 'Heil Hitler'". Times of Israel. Archived from the original on May 9, 2025. Retrieved May 9, 2025.
  32. Ye - Topic (May 14, 2025). THE HEIL SYMPHONY . Retrieved May 15, 2025 via YouTube.
  33. "THE HEIL SYMPHONY". Spotify . May 14, 2025. Retrieved May 15, 2025.
  34. King, Ashley (May 20, 2025). "Entire Kanye West Album Leaked in Discord, With Callouts". Digital Music News. Retrieved May 20, 2025.
  35. 1 2 Moore, Sam (May 19, 2025). "Kanye West's 'Cuck' Album Leaked By Hackers". HipHopDX. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  36. West, Kanye (May 19, 2025). "UNCLE is not on CUCK and is not about my wife". X (formely Twitter). Archived from the original on May 19, 2025.
  37. Art, Pop Culture & (May 19, 2025). "Kanye West reacts to CUCK album leak, denies track UNCLE is about wife Bianca Censori". The Express Tribune. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  38. West, Kanye (May 19, 2025). "Somebody got a drive and threw it on YouTube and said this is CUCK What I love about getting blocked on DSPs and having songs leaked and shows cancelled is... It proves everything I'm saying and why I'm saying". Twitter. Archived from the original on May 19, 2025.
  39. Saponara, Michael (May 22, 2025). "Ye Claims He's 'Done With Antisemitism': 'Forgive Me for the Pain I've Caused'". Billboard . Retrieved May 22, 2025.
  40. West, Kanye (May 22, 2025). "WW3". Spotify .
  41. McGovern Jones, Kellen (May 21, 2025). "Ye's Wordless "Heil Hitler" Track Still Too Loud For Spotify's Ears". Dallas Express. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
  42. "HIT SYMPHONY". Spotify . May 21, 2025. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
  43. Blessing, Davion. "IN A PERFECT WORLD". Instagram. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
  44. Paul, Bryson "Boom" (May 18, 2025). "An Entire Kanye West Album Just Leaked". HotNewHipHop. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  45. freetrash. "Ye breaks down how he sampled Justin Bieber's Instagram freestyle into a song". TikTok .
  46. 1 2 3 "Instagram".
  47. 1 2 3 @chukibeatz; (April 25, 2025). ""COUSINS" by Ye produced by Ye, DN & me written by Dave 🫨" . Retrieved May 11, 2025 via Instagram.
  48. Saponara, Michael (April 3, 2025). "Ye Confirms Bianca Censori Split in New Song: 'My Baby She Ran Away'". Billboard. Retrieved May 15, 2025.
  49. 1 2 @kanyewest (May 20, 2025). "SHEFF AND QUAD MADE THE OG HEIL HITLER BEAT" (Tweet). Retrieved May 20, 2025 via Twitter.
  50. "Instagram".

Video by Chuki Beats about "Cousins"