Ye has finally released his new album.
Kind of.
According to Pitchfork, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West premiered the long-gestating “Bully” in a YouTube livestream late Thursday; the new music was also reportedly played at listening sessions in various cities including Los Angeles.
Yet “Bully” had yet to appear on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music by Friday morning, and a YouTube page for the livestream said the video was “unavailable.”
“Bully” follows Ye’s recent placement of a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal in which he apologized for years of antisemitic remarks and attributed his behavior to medical issues stemming from injuries he sustained in a 2002 car crash.
Clips on social media of what appear to be songs from “Bully” reveal collaborations with Travis Scott and CeeLo Green, among others, as well as samples of songs by the Supremes and Stevie Wonder.
Ye has been releasing versions of “Bully” — the rapper’s first solo LP since 2022’s “Donda 2” — for more than a year; earlier editions of the music reportedly used AI, though Ye said this week on Instagram that the latest version contained “no AI.”
Next week Ye is scheduled to play two concerts at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium on April 1 and April 3. The shows will come two years after he and Ty Dolla Sign appeared at the venue as part of 2024’s Rolling Loud festival.
That date was widely expected to be a performance but turned out to be more of a listening session, with Ye and Ty wandering around a stage in the stadium’s parking lot as songs from their joint album “Vultures 1” played through a sound system.
This month a jury found Ye liable in a legal dispute brought by a former contractor who accused the rapper of a range of labor violations in the course of his work on a Malibu mansion once owned by Ye. The jury ordered him to pay $140,000.
