Kanye West spent 44 seconds quoting his haters on the song I Love Kanye from his acclaimed 2016 album The Life of Pablo: “I miss the old Kanye, straight from the ’Go Kanye. Chop up the soul Kanye, set on his goals Kanye,” he said in his lyrics. “I hate the new Kanye, the bad mood Kanye. The always rude Kanye…”
The rap star, who is now known as Ye, spent years mocking and rejecting criticism that he should return to the soulful, socially conscious sound that marked the pink polos-and-a-backpack era of his breakthrough albums, The College Dropout (2004) and Late Registration (2005).
It is surprising then that his return to music comes in the form of a new album titled Bully, which dials the clock back to the early 2000s. But the other shock comes in the form of the album’s messaging – he doesn’t say anything offensive or controversial.
Ye became famous for his chaotic genius, public feuds and mercurial temperament, which always generated headlines. But he ditched the title of provocateur when he began going on offensive rampages on Twitter (later X), targeting Jews in anti-semitic tirades and his former in-laws, the extended Kardashian family.
Prior to the release of Bully – which dropped in Australia on Sunday – he had hinted at a shift. On January 26, Ye took out a full-page paid advertisement in The Wall Street Journal apologising to all “those I’ve hurt” after hitting “rock bottom”, when his Australian wife Bianca Censori urged him to seek help.
He opened up about the bipolar disorder he was diagnosed with in 2023, and said it led him to use and sell merchandise depicting swastikas.
“I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people,” Ye said in the apology. “In early 2025, I fell into a four-month-long manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behaviour that destroyed my life.
“The black community is, unquestionably, the foundation of who I am. I am so sorry to have let you down. I love us.”
The shift to apologising and owning his mistakes in the album, as well as returning to a sound beloved by his fans (which he previously said he wouldn’t do), makes Bully a conciliatory departure from Ye’s previous three albums.
In a further step back from controversy just days before Bully’s release, Ye announced the album – which he had earlier said was going to be heavily made with AI – used no AI.
Considering he’s spent the better part of the past decade being actively antagonistic, Bully now appears to be an attempted olive branch. It comes after his last official album, 2022’s Donda 2, traded in paranoid depravity and featured songs like Scifi that sampled his ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s remarks about him. And it follows his release last May of a song titled Heil Hitler, which offended many in the Jewish community, 18 months after the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas that killed an estimated 1200 people in Israel. The song led to a ban on West entering Australia.
At times, the new album feels remarkably like fan service. Punch Drunk is a return to the crowd-pleasing chipmunk soul that “old Kanye” fans, for decades now, have been yearning for. That it’s co-produced by Ye’s 12-year-old daughter North West – who is already carving a path in her father’s footsteps, recently producing the audacious rage beat of UK underground star Skaiwater’s Blink Twice – is itself a fascinating wrinkle. The song flips a sample of The Clark Sisters’ I Can Do All Things Through Christ into something you might’ve found on The College Dropout.
The same is true for songs Whatever Works and Preacher Man, which find Ye flexing his unimpeachable skill for transforming old soul samples into emotionally affecting trips into his own scattered psyche.
On Mama’s Favorite, he samples footage of his late mother Donda celebrating his righteous ego previously seen in the troubling Netflix documentary, Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy. The tone, again, is apologetic: “Stay misunderstood, I’m often mistaken … They say I go off ’cause I lack patience, don’t think it’s my job for me to explain it,” he raps.
Will Bully entice back old fans that Ye deterred with his behaviour? So far, the reaction online has been split. Some are questioning the album’s inoffensiveness, and others wonder whether it is a genuine attempt to leave his past controversies behind. Time will tell.
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Robert Moran is Spectrum deputy editor at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners
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