Released: 2026
Genres: Pop Rap, Chipmunk Soul, Experimental Hip-Hop, R&B, Industrial Hip-Hop, Drumless
The Musiquarium’s BULLY Review Score: 9 out of 10
Haw-haw!
After a year of his worst controversies yet, including the releases of the now unavailable and extremely 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.
A couple days prior to the final release date of March 27, some vinyl and CD copies of BULLY were sold early, 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, leading to 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, which was soon to be released.
Why would Ye hide the fact that the physical albums sold in shops would still have outdated versions of the songs and A.I. vocals, when listeners are inevitably going to find out and make a fuss about it? Or was the physical release the album that Ye wanted, with the digital release being closer to the one that the fans wanted? Was this some sort of performance art to release two different versions of the same album on different mediums? Is Ye just trying to maximize the album’s sales by having people buy multiple versions of the album? Is this just the result of Ye making last minute changes to an album that was already manufactured? Or is it all of or none of the above? God only knows.
As for the bully concept, maybe it’s about 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 by 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 regressed to being profane and making “sinful” music, while also typing-out the most controversial things he could conjure up on Twitter. Was he showing that much of the world would continue to hate him, regardless of what kind of man he tried to be?
Yet, for all the surrounding hysteria, BULLY is a rather tame album, devoid of almost anything remotely controversial, instead playing somewhat like a career retrospective, exploring the sounds that have spanned his impressive body of work — BULLY sounds like it was made for the fans, but that doesn’t mean it’s half-assed and uninteresting (at least not to my ears).
Compared to the 13 song tracklist found on physical copies, the digital version of BULLY 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, excluding MISSION CONTROL and the Can cover/reinterpretation LOSING YOUR MIND.
The new songs added to the front of the digital version of BULLY are all killer: Ye adds some harder, more industrial style Yeezus era bangers (KING, THIS A MUST), a Travis Scott feature with a James Brown sample, from possibly the funniest interview of all time (FATHER), some chipmunk soul (PUNCH DRUNK, WHATEVER WORKS), a song with a Donda West voice sample (MAMA’S FAVORITE), an ominous Donda style track (SISTERS AND BROTHERS) and a handful of features absent from the physical album (Travis Scott, CeeLo Green, Peso Pluma, talkbox player André Troutman and Don Toliver, though the latter was retroactively removed due to label issues).
PREACHER MAN is a drumless track, with a sped-up soul sample like that in Bound 2, but the lyrics are more boastful than horny here; BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is a similar style song, with seemingly last-minute, re-recorded Ye vocals on the digital album. I CAN’T WAIT interpolates You Can’t Hurry Love by The Supremes, before segueing into WHITE LINES, with an André Troutman recreation of a Stevie Wonder talkbox performance of The Carpenter’s Close to You, where Ye admits that he feels like a clone of himself, possibly referencing the fan theory that Ye was replaced with a clone in the early 2020s — or maybe he’s just being introspective and earnest.
The title track starts with Nelson Muntz’ (the bully from The Simpsons) iconic haw-haw laugh, a tasty sample from a Bollywood track and a CeeLo Green hook on the chorus (digital version). Also on digital, Peso Pluma sings on the extended half Spanish/half English LAST BREATH, along with Ye, who re-recorded his vocals. ALL THE LOVE has an almost Graduation-like stadium grandiosity to it (an intro is also added in the digital release), and though it’s missing the intro from the CUCK version of the song (GAS CHAMBERS), it’s still one of the best tracks on the album. There was originally a sample of French singer Pomme’s Soleil Soleil on HIGHS AND LOWS, though the sample wasn’t cleared, so Ye (apparently) recreated it with A.I. (not sure how that works, legally-speaking).
CIRCLES samples Huit Octobre 1971 by Cortex (which was previously sampled on MF Doom’s track, One Beer), and originally featured Don Toliver, who has since been replaced by Ye. Fans seem 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. Or was this some sort of misplaced tribute to the late Suzuki? Despite the song’s bizarre nature, as someone who loves early Can, the sound of the instruments on 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).
Another of the most important changes that Ye made on the digital version was the inclusion of real vocals (re-recorded on songs like, BULLY, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and LAST BREATH), though the A.I. vocals have remained in some songs. 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 better (though they sound like they were done last minute and barely mixed or mastered), we know that Ye is still capable of rapping, 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.?
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 a perceived laziness and avoidance from rapping? Thus is the mystery of Ye.
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 for what it is, 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, though I try not to be.
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 and cussing to grieving and pleading. 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.
Aside from all the associated drama and focusing on the thing that matters most (the music), BULLY is another enjoyable work from modern rap’s most exciting, infamous and unpredictable figure, though I wouldn’t call it a comeback, as Ye was never really gone (at least not in the music zeitgeist). You can say that the album is scattershot, fragmented and sounds unfinished, with many songs barely reaching two minutes, and yet, like every previous Ye album before it, it’s a sonic mosaic with endless replayabilty and a ton of variety. Sure, I’m rating this higher than most people are, but I’m impartial and not judging the album based on Ye’s public controversies (which exist outside of the album), and am instead basing it solely on the music — it’s an album I keep returning to, despite its flaws.
Even though I think that WW3 / CUCK / IN A PERFECT WORLD was never intended to be released (it’s mostly Dave Blunts’ voice and songs) and was probably just some joke that went over everybody’s heads, I do still hope that 2025 was the peak of Ye’s infamy, so he can focus on music (and family) 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, take his time before releasing an unfinished album and delete X/Twitter once and for all.
For credit breakdowns and historic release details, view Ye on Discogs.
Back to the 2026 Album Guide or the Ye Reviews page.
Written by Brett Nippard
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