Musiquarium Album Reviews 2026

A$AP Rocky – Don’t Be Dumb

A$AP Rocky finally returns after an 8 year gap.

Since 2018’s TESTING, listeners have been eagerly awaiting A$AP Rocky’s follow-up album, to the point that it had become the thing of legends — but, after 8 long years and plenty of delays later, Don’t Be Dumb is finally out.

On Don’t Be Dumb, A$AP Rocky throws a bunch of different genres at the wall to see what sticks, making for a fascinating, albeit incohesive album — one that feels more like a traditional rap album with some experimental moments, but when he does experiment, the results are mostly quite good and leave you wanting to hear more.

ORDER OF PROTECTION is a pretty tame opener, acting more like an intro, which then takes us to HELICOPTER, which feels like something N.W.A might have made back in the late 80s (808 cowbell and all). NO TRESSPASSING, STOP SNITCHING and STOLE YA FLOW are all menacing bangers. STFU is one of the most interesting and experimental songs here, sounding a bit like a Death Grips track. AIRFORCE (BLACK DEMARCO) is an electronic song that also evokes some Death Grips, until it slows down and sounds closer to something like Purple Rain.

ROBBERY sounds like something you’d hear in a 1920s speakeasy. PUNK ROCKY is best described as an indie rock song, making it the biggest outlier on the album — in fact, I’d love to see an entire album in this style from a major rapper — well, as long as it doesn’t end up like Lil Wayne’s Rebirth.WHISKEY (RELEASE ME) is quite good up until Damon Albarn (Gorillaz) enters, accompanied by several annoying ad-libs (“boo-boo-boom!”, “skrrrrrrrrrrrt!”, “doot doot doot doot”, etc.).

It could have leaned harder into the experimental angle and it didn’t really live up to nearly.a decade of anticipation, but Don’t Be Dumb was still a good listen with a mix of experiments and more traditional bangers.

Music: 75/100

Artwork: 3.5/5

Charli xcx – Wuthering Heights

Charli experiments with an orchestra on this brilliant and ambitious film soundtrack.

Released as the soundtrack to the newest film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s famous and controversial work, Wuthering Heights sees Charli xcx experimenting with orchestral instruments and noise on this compelling work, which is so much more than just a mere soundtrack.

The opening track, the gothic and haunting House, which features spoken-word vocals from John Cale of The Velvet Underground, minimal instrumentation and a distorted industrial climax, was an incredibly bold choice for a single, let alone the first single since Charli xcx’s critically and commercially successful BRAT era, only two years prior. This song sees a surreal combination of two musicians whom are separated by half a century of age, and from different generations and completely opposing ends of the musical spectrum, but sees Charli thinking outside of the box of pop confines by having sought out a collaboration with such an artist in the first place, seeking a sound that was both elegant and brutal (as John Cale had described VU). Considering John Cale’s production work with the late German chanteuse Nico and with New York City punk rocker Patti Smith (on her seminal 1976 album, Horses), he’s had a legacy of working well with women.

Chains Of Love was a slightly more conventional single that followed House only a few days later, but is no less rich or exquisite. Wall Of Sound is appropriately-titled, with a wall of strings that push up against Charli’s vocals. Dying For You and its delayed synth intro feel like something Kate Bush would have made in the 1980s. Altars is a grandiose romantic ballad with a sensual drum beat. Eyes Of The World sees an appearance from singer/actress Sky Ferreira. Funny Mouth is an epic closer, with some intense industrial flourishes.

Charli promised that her next album would be the anti-BRAT — and this does fit the description, as the instrumentation on Wuthering Heights is primarily vintage, rustic and a little bit industrial, so it doesn’t feel much at all like BRAT, though it does still feel 100% like Charli. There are still flavours of 1980s revivalism throughout the album, and no other song gets quite as dark and strange as House, but this is far more experimental than most pop artists would ever dream of being. If Charli’s goal was to make an album that was both elegant and brutal, I’d say she succeeded. Every track here was immaculate and theatrical and I love seeing pop artists be this adventurous and unpredictable.

Charli xcx’s Wuthering Heights works very well as a standalone album, something many soundtracks fail to do, and while I’m yet to see this music in the context of the film, I can still say that this has the potential to become one of the memorable film soundtracks of all time — that’s how great it is.

Music: 90/100

Artwork: 4/5

Foo Fighters – Your Favorite Toy

Foo Fighters are back with some carefree garage rock.

Three years after the pain and loss of But Here We Are (a late career triumph) and a highly publicized marital affair, Dave Grohl & friends are back, but the emotion, sincerity and experimentation of its predecessor are nowhere to be found here.

Compared to But Here We Are‘s sound, which was a mixture of the band’s typical post-grunge sound, along with some shoegaze elements, Your Favorite Toy harkens back to the Foo’s early days, sounding far less polished and more raw than most of the band’s input from the past ten years.

Caught In The Echo is a energized, punkish opener, though its chorus sounds a bit too similar to their 2014 track, The Feast And The Famine — still, it’s a reliable enough Foo banger. Of All People is continues with the garage rock/punk sound of early Foo Fighters. The title track feels a bit like a rawer take on the dance rock sound of a Medicine At Midnight track like Making A Fire and also incorporates backing vocals from one of Grohl’s daughters (though it’s Harper and not Violet this time). Unconditional is somewhat reminiscent of 80s R.E.M. Child Actor‘s refrain of “turn the cameras off” is a bit too repetitive. The heavy and metallic lead single, Asking For A Friend, closes off the album, and is the closest to this album’s definitive Foo Fighters song.

Considering that Your Favorite Toy is the band’s 12th album and is more than 30 years into the band’s career, it’s a fairly safe and album, largely absent of the emotional impact or heartfelt songwriting of But Here We Are. It would have been nice to see Dave Grohl address his affair, crafting another inspired album from the remorse and regret, but a raw and concise batch of garage rock is far from the worst thing the Foos have ever done either.

Music: 65/100

Artwork: 2/5

Kim Gordon – PLAY ME

Kim Gordon continues to be the hippest septuagenarian in music.

After fully immersing herself in the trap instrumentals of The Collective, Kim Gordon and returning producer Justin Raisen are back with perhaps her best sounding batch of songs yet.

Much like its predecessor, PLAY ME revolves around criticisms of technology, particularly the recent A.I. push (DIRTY TECH, BLACK OUT) and though detractors of The Collective may write the lyricism off as curmudgeonly, the hysteria and anxieties surrounding technology (and the resulting human redundancy) are more valid than ever.

The title track starts the album off feeling like some sort of dystopian, sci-fi blaxploitation film, making for a riveting opener. The Sonic Youth reminiscent lead single NOT TODAY is a blend of post-punk, dream pop and krautrock; GIRL WITH A LOOK has a similar dreamy instrumental. Dave Grohl provides the beats on the bizarre BUSY BEE. The ire of SUBCON seems to be directed towards a certain tech-obsessed billionaire, criticizing his short-sighted ambitions to have the elite abandon Earth for the substantially less-inhabitable Mars (“You wanna go to Mars and then what?”); then there’s POST EMPIRE which seems to target a particular western world leader. NAIL BITER is full of fuzzed-out, bass.

My one criticism with PLAY ME is BYEBYE25!, a 2025 remake of the opener from 2024’s The Collective, which changes the lyrics to reflect major and controversial topics of that year. It would make more sense to have left it as a non-album single, but seeing as I liked it the first time around (and it still bangs here), then its inclusion isn’t too big of an issue.

Although I preferred The Collective‘s more experimental and overall psychedelic production, PLAY ME refines the admittedly rough edges and abandons the density of that album’s dark sound, making for what’s probably her most rounded (and relatively accessible) solo album yet.

PLAY ME is short at just under 30 minutes and it isn’t as bold or challenging as The Collective was, but this is still an excellent work from the veteran alternative rocker. I was a fan of Kim Gordon long before she went solo, but I still never expected the bassist of Sonic Youth to be one of my favourite major artists of the 2020s and yet, here we are.

Music: 80/100

Artwork: 3.5/5

Megadeth – Megadeth

Megadeth releases their final album.

The final album from Dave Mustaine’s Metallica-spite machine, simply titled Megadeth, finds the metal pioneers giving one last hurrah before bowing out after four decades of ass-kicking thrash metal

Tipping Point was a strong lead single that has Megadeth still sounding fierce and fiery. Let There Be Shred shows that age hasn’t slowed down Dave Mustaine’s ability to shred. The album ends with a re-recording of the 1984 Metallica song Ride The Lightning, which Dave Mustaine had co-written while still in the band. It obviously sounds inferior to Metallica’s version, but it’s still nice to see Dave returning to one of his songs that preceded Megadeth.

Yes, Mustaine’s lyrics can be cheesy and his vocals aren’t what they once were, but this is Dave Mustaine, a man who was always known more for his shredding than his lyrics or singing. Even then, considering both the throat cancer that he battled at the start of the decade and his age (64 as of writing), Mustaine’s voice could have sounded much worse.

Megadeth may not be the grand and epic finale that many fans may have envisioned or wanted, but it’s Dave Mustaine doing what he does best and going out on his own terms and it’s still a respectable ending to one of metal’s most legendary bands.

Music: 65/100

Artwork: 4.5/5

My New Band Believe – My New Band Believe

The ex-black midi bassist/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist’s new band.

After his ex-bandmate Geordie Greep had released one of the best albums of 2024 with The New Sound, the bar was set high for any new musical endeavours from the band’s other members. Morgan Simpson went on to join Invariance, releasing Wish You Well in 2025 and Cameron Picton formed My New Band Believe, whose debut album is full of orchestral whimsy and top-tier acoustic guitar playing.

Target Practice is a pleasant chamber folk opener that abruptly leads into The Blink Of An Eye, which recalls the psychedelic folk of a song like Led Zeppelin’s Friends. Heart Of Darkness is an 8-minute epic with twisting rhythms and an atmospheric outro that wouldn’t feel out of place on a King Crimson record. Love Story‘s sweet and romantic balladry contrasts with the perverted lust of Geordie Greep’s The New Sound — both perspectives different sides of the same coin, both driven by desire. Actress is another epic that never loses momentum or suspense over it’s 8 and a half minute runtime. One Night is similar to the opener, loosely bookending the album.

My New Band Believe is yet another fantastic off-shoot from the short-lived black midi, with Cameron Picton giving Geordie Greep a run for his money. This album shows just how crucial Cameron Picton was to his previous band’s sound and that there was obviously too much songwriting talent in that band for them to last.

Music: 80/100

Artwork: 3.5/5

Nine Inch Nails & Boys Noize – Nine Inch Noize

Nine Inch Nails x Boys Noize

Having recently worked with electronic artist Boys Noize on Tron Ares and its remix album Tron Ares: Divergence, as well as touring with him on their powerhouse Peel It Back tour (I was lucky to have seen it twice), a full collaboration with Nine Inch Nails seemed inevitable at this point.

Nine Inch Noize is unconventional, as it isn’t quite a remix album, nor is it a live album or even a studio album, but a bit of all three, consisting of no original songs, but rather techno-heavy/rave-friendly remixes of various Nine Inch Nails songs from across the band’s career, as well as a couple covers. The tracklist includes some of the more obvious choices for an album like this, with Closer, Heresy, Copy Of A and Came Back Haunted. There are a few deeper cuts like Vessel, The Warning and Me, I’m Not (all from Year Zero), She’s Gone Away (from Not The Actual Events) and the band’s recent Tron: Ares soundtrack hit, As Alive As You Need Me To Be. There is also Parasite from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ side project How To Destroy Angels and a Soft Cell cover, Memorabilia. There are no songs from Pretty Hate Machine, but that album was already more dance-oriented and electronic than the band’s later work, so it would have been a fairly pointless exercise.

I wouldn’t say any of the songs here are superior to their original counterparts, but they still do them justice by bringing out new dimensions in them by swapping out the headbanging for dancing. I’m not typically fond of remix albums, but this was a cohesive and consistent project.

Music: 75/100

Artwork: 3/5

U2 – Days Of Ash

U2 sounds (somewhat) inspired again.

Days Of Ash is the first collection of new music from U2 since 2017’s Songs Of Experience (2023’s Songs Of Surrender was just remakes of several of the band’s greatest songs). Inspired by increasingly worsening geo-political tensions, wars and unpredictable world leaders, Bono feels the most inspired that he’s sounded in over two decades.

Days Of Ash sounds like U2 trying to recapture the protest-powered proto-punk of 1983’s War, but it comes off as U2 trying to recapture War as sexagenarians; regardless the effort is noble.

American Obituary is a decent, politically-charged opener (if not a little cheesy), with the following two tracks also being fairly good songs. Wildpiece is a 1+ minute long interlude with spoken word vocals and feels random on such a short project. Yours Eternally features the eternally bland Ed Sheeran, but is better than you’d expect.

U2 will never relive the artistic or commercial glories of their nearly perfect body of work between 1980-1993, but they don’t have to; all people want is a half-decent new U2 album and while this is only an EP, it feels like a step in the right direction.

Music: 60/100

Artwork: 2/5

U2 – Easter Lily

U2 releases their second EP of the year, improving upon the first.

Following February’s Days Of Ash EP, U2 is back again with an improved collection of songs and their best work in a long time, recalling the post-punk sound of their first few records.

Tracks like Song For Hal, In A Life and Scars have that post-punk feel and guitar tone from The Edge that made their 1980s work so seminal. Resurrection Song and Easter Parade give the album’s title (and release date) some credence and comes as no surprise, as U2 has always been a Christian rock band after all.

The only skip on the EP is COEXIST (I Will Bless The Lord At All Times?), which drones on far too long and is a bit dull compared to the previous tracks, though the experimentation is commendable.

While it won’t rival anything from Boy, War or the underrated October, this return to their post-punk roots makes for one of the more enjoyable U2 projects that they’ve released in a long time, despite how regressive that may sound. The cover is also an improvement over the one from the Days Of Ash.

Music: 65/100

Artwork: 3/5

War Child Records – HELP(2)

The long-awaited spiritual successor to 1995’s The Help Album.

Produced by James Ford (who has previously worked with several artists here), HELP(2) is the spiritual successor to 1995’s legendary The Help Album, which was released to raise funds for war-stricken areas in the world. 31 years later, the world is still rife with war and geo-political tensions, so it seemed appropriate to revisit the concept of The Help Album and raise funds for those who suffer the most from war: the civilians.

Like the first Help album, HELP(2) compiles a dream team roster of some of the biggest acts in music today, including returning acts like Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon of Blur, older acts like Arctic Monkeys, Beth Gibbons, Beck, Depeche Mode and Pulp, and newer artists like Black Country, New Road, The Last Dinner Party, Fontaines D.C., Cameron Winter and Olivia Rodrigo.

The lead single Opening Night finds Arctic Monkeys revisiting an old unfinished AM era song, but blends in the more recent sensibilities from their latest LP, The Car — and it’s easily the best and most memorable song here and a wise choice for the inaugural track. Flags with Damon Albarn sounds like a typical modern Gorillaz song, i.e. dull and lifeless, especially following such a good Monkeys song. Let’s Do It Again! by The Last Dinner Party sounds like it’s going for a glam rock, 1973 era Bowie dark cabaret vibe. Strangers by Black Country, New Road is a pleasant enough song with electronic piano, but is more of that girly twee stuff they’ve been doing since last year’s Forever Howlong.

The always flawless Beth Gibbons performs a warm, sparse and understated cover of The Velvet Underground’s classic 1967 track, Sunday Morning. King Krule’s The 343 Loop is just a brief little instrumental that feels more like an interlude than a proper song. Depeche Mode does a synthesized cover of (disgraced) singer Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Universal Soldier. Helicopters changes things up with some dub music. Beabadoobee covers Elliott Smith’s Say Yes, but strips it of its torment and agony.

Fontaines D.C. covers Sinéad O’Connor’s Black Boys On Mopeds. Warning by Geese’s Cameron Winter is one of the more interesting and experimental songs here with some VU-like droning. Pulp’s Begging For Change is a decent rocker from the recently reunited Britpoppers, but the spelt-out lyrics are a little bit cheesy. Wet Leg sounds less obnoxious than usual here on Obvious, but I’m still not very fond of them.

While I commend HELP(2) for its noble intentions and its charitable nature, there just weren’t enough songs here that interested me when all was said and done, though it does have some eclectic variety and a few great songs (Opening Night, Warning, Sunday Morning).

Music: 70/100

Artwork: 3.5/5

Ye – BULLY

Haw-haw!

After a year of his worst controversies yet, including more pro-Nazi sentiments, the releases of the (now unavailable) controversial singles WW3, COUSINS and HEIL HITLER (all from the unreleased WW3 / CUCK / IN A PERFECT WORLD album), and his use of A.I. to finish his vocals on recent projects like VULTURES 2 and DONDA 2, BULLY is finally here, following several work-in-progress iterations and half a dozen delays from March 2025 to March 2026. What a ride that rollout was…

A couple days prior to the final release date of March 27, some vinyl and CD copies of BULLY were sold early (possibly intentionally), leading to near-instant fan outrage on social media due to the preservation of the A.I. vocals that fans have been complaining about since the previous year, as well as a wave of order cancellations — this led to Ye responding on X with an updated tracklist and the reassurance of no A.I. vocals on an updated album soon to be released.

Why would Ye hide the fact that the physical albums that diehard fans would buy would still have outdated versions of songs and A.I. vocals, when they are inevitably going to find out and make a fuss about it? Was that always the intended album, with fans only bullying Ye into releasing a “better” version of the album digitally — the version they wanted? Was it the extra push Ye needed for motivation and encouragement? Or is Ye just trying to maximize the album’s sales by having people buy multiple versions of the album?

Another theory for the bully concept is how the media bullied Ye into becoming the villain that they’ve been saying he was since the president Trump handshake/M.A.G.A. hat/”slavery is a choice” controversies in 2018. Despite going non-secular and cleaning up his image, he was continuously ridiculed and mocked in the media, which was only exacerbated by his divorce and failed presidential run, so perhaps he was just giving the people what they wanted him to be. Instead of the profanity-free, Jesus-loving, husband and father he was trying to be, he went back to being profane and making “sinful” music, while also typing the most controversial things he could conjure up on Twitter.

Compared to the original 13 song sequence found on physical copies, the final version of BULLY (for now) has 18 tracks, with the new songs comprising of the first 8 songs (other than ALL THE LOVE), with the original BULLY album taking up the rest of the runtime, with the exception of MISSION CONTROL and the Can cover/reinterpretation LOSING YOUR MIND, which have both been omitted from the digital album.

And that leads me to the most important change that Ye made (at least in the eyes of the fans), which was changing the vocals from A.I. voice modulations to his actual vocals — the one thing that seemed to make the difference between this album being good or bad.

Did Ye always plan to make BULLY with A.I.? Are the metal grills that have been adorned to his visage for the past couple of years (and part of the album’s marketing) simply an excuse for not rapping/singing, or are they a red herring, with Ye seeing the artistic potential of A.I. in music, not so different from his influential (but initially controversial) use of autotune on 2008’s 808s & Heartbreak? Seeing as the re-recorded real Ye vocals on the digital edition sound fairly good, we know that Ye is still capable, so why else would he focus so much on A.I., especially when he knows how much people are resistant to it? Did Ye think that he can be an early adopter once again, being the first to release a major album (and a possibly acclaimed one at that — though unlikely) made with A.I.? Why not?

As far as I know, Ye is often canonized as the first major rapper to break away from the confines of the genre’s gangster roots, the pioneering producer of chipmunk soul, the first rapper to use autotune the way he did and the first major artist to make post-release changes to an album in real time (The Life Of Pablo), so why is it so hard to fathom that he could use A.I. in an innovative way, rather than as a cheat? Again, I’m not a proponent of A.I., and perhaps I’m just playing the devil’s advocate, but did Ye have his reasons to experiment (with VULTURES 2 and DONDA 2 being tests), or was this simply due to the accused laziness that fans have thrown at him?

Despite how you may feel about Ye’s use of A.I. on the physical version of BULLY, it doesn’t suggest that this album is simply the result of somebody typing in “create a Ye album” as a prompt for their A.I. model — the physical edition of BULLY is actually fairly interesting, with none of the A.I. vocals actually sounding that bad (and I’ve heard some awful A.I. voice recreations).

Perhaps I’m biased towards Ye (he’s the music figure I’ve written the most about of the new millennium and easily the most fascinating and controversial), though I try not to be; it’s not like I was always a fan, as his music still had to win me over once upon a time, which led me to be willing to tolerate his abrasive persona. But even if you strip away the man and the infamy, his albums each paint different sonic worlds, with no one album ever imitating the last; some of his works even border on challenging at times, which is extremely rare from such a mainstream artist, and he never refuses to explore the entire emotional spectrum from boasting to grieving. How is using A.I. any different from what he’s done with autotune? Or am I giving too much credit to someone who might not even have a method to their madness? However, none of that matters too much, as the digital version of BULLY is mostly devoid of the A.I. vocals that inhabits the entire physical edition of the album anyway (which I am honestly grateful for nonetheless).

The new songs added to the front of BULLY are all killer: Ye adds some of the harder, more industrial style Yeezus bangers (KING, THIS A MUST), a Travis Scott feature (FATHER) with a James Brown sample from possibly the greatest interview of all time, some chipmunk soul (PUNCH DRUNK, WHATEVER WORKS), a song with a beautiful Donda West voice sample (MAMA’S FAVORITE), a Donda era-sounding track (SISTERS AND BROTHERS) and a handful of features that aren’t on the physical albums (the aforementioned Travis Scott, CeeLo Green, Peso Pluma and Don Toliver, though the latter has since been removed).

ALL THE LOVE has an almost Graduation-like stadium grandiosity to it and adds a different intro and overall feels like an enhancement from the previous version of the song. CeeLo Green adds a quirky hook to the title track. Peso Pluma sings on the new version of the half Spanish/half English LAST BREATH along with Ye, who re-recorded his vocals; it’s also longer by nearly a minute. DAMN goes from minimalism to maximalism. Ye’s recorded vocals on BEAUTY AND THE BEAST do sound like they were re-recorded last minute, but I’ll still take a slightly sloppy Ye over an artificially-generated Ye.

PREACHER MAN has the type of sped up soul samples that Ye initially made his name off of; BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is a similar style song, with a slightly better sound than the single version from 2025, though there is still noticeable surface noise from the sample source, but to my ears, that just adds character. WHITE LINES samples a Stevie Wonder talkbox performance of The Carpenter’s Close To You and has Ye revealing that he feels like a clone of himself, perhaps pointing fun at the fan theory that Ye was replaced with a clone in late 2022/2023, or perhaps its introspective and earnest. I CAN’T WAIT interpolates You Can’t Hurry Love by The Supremes and is far more enjoyable than Phil Collins’ milquetoast take on the song in the 1980s.

The title track starts with a sample (or recreation) of The Simpsons‘ Nelson Muntz’ iconic haw-haw laugh, though I have no idea how Ye hasn’t been sued by the House of Mouse yet; the rest of the track uses a sample from a Bollywood track and it’s a total banger, with CeeLo Green adding an interesting hook on this new version. ALL THE LOVE has a new opening here and a drumbeat reminiscent to that of the Yeezus track, Black Skinhead. There was originally a sample of French singer Pomme’s Soleil Soleil on HIGHS AND LOWS, though the sample wasn’t cleared so they whipped up something else that sounds close, but not quite the same. CIRCLES samples Huit Octobre 1971 by Cortex, which was sampled in 2004 on MF Doom’s track One Beer and originally featured Don Toliver, who has since been replaced by Ye (seems to be a label dispute and not a personal one). Fans are up in arms over the changes from the version of CIRCLES previewed in 2025, though I actually like this new version, as there’s a greater difference from MF Doom’s use of the sample. DAMN no longer starts with the Nina Simone sample that was in the 2025 single version, though it’s better off without it; the version here is also more produced than the minimalistic version on the physical release.

The closing song on the physical edition of the CD, LOSING YOUR MIND, is practically identical to Can’s classic 1972 song Vitamin C (Ye had previously sampled Can’s Sing Swan Song on Graduation‘s Drunk And Hot Girls, so he’s clearly a fan), with Ye’s voice replacing the late Damo Suzuki, added modern production, and changing the chorus from “You’re losing your vitamin c” to “You’re losing your mind”. I initially wanted to hate LOSING YOUR MIND, as it comes off as lazy plagiarism, but perhaps there was a reason Ye chose this a the original closer — after all, he has been losing his mind for years, according to everybody around him. Despite the song’s flaws, as someone who loves early 70s Can, the sound of the instruments in LOSING YOUR MIND do sound great, far more vibrant than the most recent remaster I’ve heard of Vitamin C.

Comparing the two versions of BULLY, the physical release feels skeletal and barren compared to the digital edition, which makes it all the more baffling that it was even distributed to stores in this state. Maybe Ye was going for a cold and isolated sound like what he achieved on 808s & Heartbreak, and while I do understand if that was his original vision, the kitchen sink approach of the digital edition ultimately sounds far more fulfilling and suitably fragmented (even though it only ends up being 10 minutes longer). I prefer the re-recorded, non-A.I. vocals (mostly noticeable on the title track, LAST BREATH and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) to the A.I. vocals, even if they aren’t perfect. And even if Ye’s original intention was to never use real vocals on BULLY, I do prefer his more conventional (and less controversial) approach to vocals than the A.I. experiments.

BULLY is an imperfect album, with a lengthy and controversial album rollout that could have been the result of a mental health crisis and/or performance art/marketing/publicity — or perhaps, as I had earlier theorized, the entire project was a push/pull between Ye and his fans, contemporaries and society, with Ye simultaneously bullying those around him while his fans are bullying him into making the album that they wanted him to make (just look at what his “fanbase” says in any of his various subreddits; they act like they know how to make an album better than Ye does). Or maybe BULLY was just Ye proving he can’t be cancelled, though the music contained within never really reflects his radical opinions from the past few years, fortunately. However, since the release of the album. several of Ye’s European shows have been cancelled, due to the nature of his recent controversies.

Aside from all the associated drama and focusing on the thing that matters most (the music!), BULLY is another great, varied, flawed masterpiece from modern rap’s most exciting, infamous and unpredictable figure, though I wouldn’t call it a comeback, as Ye was never really gone. Detractors will say that the album is fragmented and sounds unfinished, and yet to me, like every previous Ye album before it, it’s a blissful sonic mosaic with infinite replayabilty. I do hope that 2025 was the peak of his infamy so he can focus 100% on music and have a My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy-level critical and public comeback, but it’s going to require him to stay on his meds, surround himself with the right people and stay off Twitter.

Music: 90/100

Artwork: 5/5

FIN

Brett Nippard

The Musiquarium