Bully is the twelfth studio album by the American rapper and record producer Kanye West. It was released through YZY and Gamma on March 28, 2026. Guest appearances include Travis Scott, André Troutman, Nine Vicious, CeeLo Green, and Peso Pluma; a deluxe edition, released on June 19, adds Lauryn Hill, Don Toliver, and the Wrldfms Tony Williams. Production was mainly handled by West, Troutman, the Legendary Traxster, Nkenge 1x, and 88-Keys, with contributions from various others.
West began working on Bully after the release of Vultures 1 and Vultures 2 (2024), and announced it in September 2024. He surprise released multiple work-in-progress versions via X on March 18, 2025, accompanied by the Bully V1 short film, directed by West and edited by Hype Williams. It stars West's son, Saint, who fights New Japan Pro-Wrestling wrestlers with a toy mallet. Following Bully V1, West delayed the album several times while promoting it with two extended play previews in June 2025. In March 2026, he released the album on physical formats. Shortly after, he premiered it at a listening party in Inglewood livestreamed on YouTube, which was then removed. Hours later, Bully was released to streaming services with a different tracklist, along with the music video for "Father".
Sonically, Bully extensively relies on sampling and interpolations, and West mostly sings instead of rapping. The album features industrial-based production and tracks reminiscent of West's early work, with the lyrics centered on grief, isolation, ego, detachment, and emotional fatigue. Most of West's vocals in the Bully V1 and physical releases were artificial intelligence-generated audio deepfakes. West re-recorded most lyrics with his own vocals for the final release, with mixing and mastering redone by Irko for the deluxe edition.
Bully polarized critics, who praised the production but were divided over whether it was a return to form for West or overly imitative of his past work. It debuted and peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 behind BTS's Arirang, and topped the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and US Independent Albums charts. The album debuted at the top five in multiple other countries. Following its release, West embarked on the international Ye Live Concert Tour, starting with two concerts at SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, in early April.
Background According to the producer Mike Dean, West began working on the Bully song "Beauty and the Beast" during the sessions for his tenth album Donda (2021). West offered the song "Preacher Man" to the Canadian rapper Drake, who declined, before incorporating it into Bully. In 2024, West collaborated with the American singer Ty Dolla Sign to release the collaborative albums Vultures 1 and Vultures 2 as ¥$. Vultures 1 was subject to mixed reviews, while Vultures 2 was panned for being released in an unfinished state and its use of artificial intelligence (AI).
In February 2024, the producer Erick Sermon said that West had been working on a solo album, Y3, before putting it aside to work on Vultures. Sermon said he contributed to Y3 in 2023; West denied his story. On September 26, 2024, West posted a video on Instagram showing himself producing with a "prominent sped-up soul sample" on an ASR-10 keyboard. The beat sounded similar to "Preacher Man", which he previewed at a concert in China earlier that month. Two days later, during his performance at the Wuyuan River Stadium in Haikou, China, West announced Bully, previewing "Beauty and the Beast" and "Preacher Man". He posted previews on Instagram and his website over the next few days.
Production
2024
Following the Vultures releases, record producer Digital Nas shared text messages from West indicating his intention to go into "full art studio mode". American music journalist Touré reported that Bully would be a concept album inspired by West's solitude living in Tokyo, with West as its sole producer. He further stated that it was common for other producers and writers to help West while he came up with the overall concept for previous albums, in contrast to this period of a "fresh chapter in his life" where he is able to be whoever he wants.
Though Touré claimed that West worked on Bully by himself and effectively lived in isolation, West invited collaborators Don Toliver and Baby Keem to Tokyo the same month as the report, and mentioned on an April 2025 livestream with Digital Nas that the album would feature co-writing from Quentin Miller, Ty Dolla Sign, Toliver, Malik Yusef, and Billy Walsh. In October 2024, Japanese musician Yojiro Noda of the rock band Radwimps was invited to do live instrumentation for the album, with him and a group of session musicians contributing to the tracks "Beauty and the Beast", "Bully", "Circles", "Highs and Lows", and "White Lines" on the final album. Engineer Josh Schuback began working on tracks after finishing his mixing of Vultures 2, which he was asked to do after being invited to a studio session where West created beats on an ASR-10 for Cyhi the Prynce. Once West started working on Bully, Schuback asked mentor and fellow engineer John Scott to come to Tokyo and work on the album, who ended up contributing additional bass guitar to three of its tracks.
2025–2026 In 2025, during the production of Bully, West entered a manic episode, made antisemitic, pro-Nazi, and racist remarks, and began working on the unreleased album Cuck with the American rapper Dave Blunts as its songwriter. Some Cuck contributors, such as the Blunts producer Sheffmade, went on to work extensively on Bully. "All the Love", co-produced by Sheffmade, was recorded as an eight-minute freestyle and developed as "Gas Chambers" during the Cuck sessions before it was moved to Bully. Most work on Cuck had ceased by September 2025, when Blunts cut ties with West and alleged that he was "groomed" into writing it.
At some point into Bully production, West's camp of contributors was "short-staffed", so he invited the Vultures 1 collaborator Adegboyega Ikwue (stage name Adey) to help with engineering. Ikwue began collaborating with West's cousin, the American singer the Wrldfms Tony Williams, co-writing and producing music alongside him. They wrote the deluxe edition track "Mission Control" together, which caught West's attention; Ikwue later reflected that West "would come in and sit with you and check in and make sure you're doing what he wants you to be doing. He knows music so well that he can take apart a song in the most ridiculous way possible." According to Rolling Stone, West finished recording Bully before his Wall Street Journal apology for antisemitic statements in January 2026.
Bully V1
Bully V1 are early versions of Bully, announced through West's X account and exclusively released through YouTube and Apple Music on March 18, 2025. Bully V1 is accompanied by a black-and-white short film of the same name, directed by West and edited by Hype Williams. It contains nine or ten songs, depending on the version, with different track listings for each release. The film opens with "Preacher Man" regardless of version, while the "post Hype version" features "Circles" and "Bully" as the fourth and fifth tracks, respectively. Other songs include "Highs and Lows" and "Last Breath". "Melrose", featuring West's frequent collaborators Playboi Carti and Ty Dolla Sign, is the tenth and final track on the version West released on X but is absent from the YouTube upload.
Short film The film stars Kanye's son Saint West, who stands in a wrestling ring wielding a toy mallet and fends off aggressors portrayed by Japanese professional wrestlers Yoh, Toru Yano, Tiger Mask, and El Desperado. The album plays over the footage, the first cut of which lasts for 29 minutes; a later cut runs for 45 minutes. According to Rolling Stone Jayson Buford, Saint represents Kanye, "who envisions himself as a martyr being attacked by all sides". However, the film's tone is comedic, with GQ Paul Thompson writing that the visuals feature "a playfulness [and] generosity" reflected in the music.
Composition
Billboard Gil Kaufman writes that sonically, Bully V1 resembled West's "most experimental, creatively lauded period" from the late 2000s, specifically 808s & Heartbreak (2008) and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010). Kaufman described the songs as "spare, soul-flecked compositions", featuring West crooning with vocals processed through Auto-Tune. The full album incorporates pitched up soul samples and elements of industrial music.
On Bully V1, West mostly sings instead of rapping, and according to him, half of his vocals are AI-generated deepfakes. Thompson writes that West's use of AI is not immediately obvious, since "[his] vocals for the most part function as texture rather than the songs' engine". He said it becomes clear about halfway through the album due to the vocals' resemblance to those in 808s & Heartbreak. Along with the vocals, Bully also employs AI software in its production. In his February 2025 interview with Justin LaBoy, West championed the benefits of AI stem separation, explaining that it can separate the vocals, bassline, or drums from any song. When West sends a song or sample to his engineers, he replies with, for example, "[John Scott], AI". West had previously used AI separation technology on the Stem Player, his collaboration with Kano Computing.
As with West's early work, Bully V1 relies heavily on sampling. Recordings such as "A Change Is Gonna Come" (1964) by Sam Cooke, "You Can't Hurry Love" (1966) by the Supremes, "(They Long to Be) Close to You" (1970) by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, "Huit Octobre 1971" (1975) by Cortex, "Bésame Mama" (1996) by Poncho Sanchez, and "Soleil Soleil" (2020) by Pomme are sampled or interpolated. "Losing Your Mind", a track from the physical version of the album, features an artificial intelligence deepfake cover of the Can song "Vitamin C" (1972), while "Bully" samples The Simpsons character Nelson Muntz's "Ha-ha!" catchphrase. MusicTech and Variety noted that many of these appeared to be uncleared. Pomme had previously denied West permission to sample "Soleil Soleil", citing disagreements with his political views at the time, and the sample ended up not being used in the final version.
Music and lyrics
Overview Bully revolves around old samples, industrial-based production, and beats reminiscent of West's earlier work, including "808s-style Auto-Tune wobbling" and "abrasive metallic beats" similar to Yeezus (2013). Eddy Lamarre of Rolling Out considered it to be a mixture of Yeezus, The Life of Pablo (2016), and Jesus is King (2019), featuring spiritual undertones as well as hard synths and industrial drums.
Compared to the short nature of Bully V1 and the physical release, which lasts about 30 minutes, the digital release of Bully contains eighteen tracks in a running time of around 42 minutes with much of West's artificial intelligence-generated audio deepfakes replaced with his recorded vocals. The majority of the tracks are usually short, ending around the two-minute mark. Lyrically, the album centers on grief, isolation, ego, detachment, and emotional fatigue. West expresses vulnerability on tracks including "Mama's Favorite" and "Preacher Man", as well as addressing controversies surrounding him in several tracks throughout the album.
Tracks 1–9