{"id":576171,"date":"2026-03-31T11:17:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/576171\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T11:17:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:17:59","slug":"ye-returns-to-old-sound-with-new-apologetic-messaging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/576171\/","title":{"rendered":"Ye returns to old sound with new apologetic messaging"},"content":{"rendered":"

March 31, 2026 \u2014 7:30pm<\/p>\n

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Kanye West spent 44 seconds quoting his haters on the song I Love Kanye from his acclaimed 2016 album The Life of Pablo: \u201cI miss the old Kanye, straight from the \u2019Go Kanye. Chop up the soul Kanye, set on his goals Kanye,\u201d he said in his lyrics. \u201cI hate the new Kanye, the bad mood Kanye. The always rude Kanye\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

\"KanyeKanye West, who is now known as Ye, has dropped his new album, Bully \u2013 which is surprisingly uncontroversial. AP<\/p>\n

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\u2019s messaging \u2013 he doesn\u2019t say anything offensive or controversial.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> and his former in-laws, the extended Kardashian family.<\/p>\n

Prior to the release of Bully \u2013 which dropped in Australia on Sunday \u2013 he had hinted at a shift. On January 26, Ye took out a full-page paid advertisement in The Wall Street Journal apologising<\/a> to all \u201cthose I\u2019ve hurt\u201d after hitting \u201crock bottom\u201d, when his Australian wife Bianca Censori urged him to seek help.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"KanyeKanye West with his Australian wife, Bianca Censori.Jordan Strauss\/Invision\/AP<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people,\u201d Ye said in the apology. \u201cIn early 2025, I fell into a four-month-long manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behaviour that destroyed my life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe black community is, unquestionably, the foundation of who I am. I am so sorry to have let you down. I love us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019t do), makes Bully a conciliatory departure from Ye\u2019s previous three albums.<\/p>\n

In a further step back from controversy just days before Bully\u2019s release, Ye announced the album \u2013 which he had earlier said was going to be heavily made with AI \u2013 used no AI.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Kanye<\/a><\/p>\n

Considering he\u2019s 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\u2019s Donda 2, traded in paranoid depravity and featured songs like Scifi that sampled his ex-wife Kim Kardashian\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At times, the new album feels remarkably like fan service. Punch Drunk is a return to the crowd-pleasing chipmunk soul that \u201cold Kanye\u201d fans, for decades now, have been yearning for. That it\u2019s co-produced by Ye\u2019s 12-year-old daughter North West \u2013 who is already carving a path in her father\u2019s footsteps, recently producing the audacious rage beat of UK underground star Skaiwater\u2019s Blink Twice \u2013 is itself a fascinating wrinkle. The song flips a sample of The Clark Sisters\u2019 I Can Do All Things Through Christ into something you might\u2019ve found on The College Dropout.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Addressing<\/a><\/p>\n

On Mama\u2019s 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: \u201cStay misunderstood, I\u2019m often mistaken \u2026 They say I go off \u2019cause I lack patience, don\u2019t think it\u2019s my job for me to explain it,\u201d he raps.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s inoffensiveness, and others wonder whether it is a genuine attempt to leave his past controversies behind. Time will tell.<\/p>\n

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\"RobertRobert Moran<\/a> is Spectrum deputy editor at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 31, 2026 \u2014 7:30pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-576171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}