{"id":357404,"date":"2026-03-31T20:43:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T20:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/357404\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T20:43:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T20:43:11","slug":"kanye-west-tries-a-career-reset-with-bully-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/357404\/","title":{"rendered":"Kanye West Tries a Career Reset With ‘Bully’: Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s possible that we didn\u2019t, in fact, want the old Kanye<\/a>. Bully, the 12th studio album from Ye, n\u00e9 Kanye West<\/a>, feels in some ways like a greatest-hits compilation: There are soul samples flipped with the alchemic acumen that made Ye one of the main architects of the past 20 years of popular music. There are crisp, stadium-ready melodies and polished, albeit just serviceable, hooks. Yet the project feels lifeless overall, as though the Ye whom fans might remember, like the times he represents, is indeed never coming back.<\/p>\n

\n\tBully arrives after the much embattled Vultures<\/a>, which Ye struggled to get on streaming platforms while still managing to deliver a Number One song in \u201cCarnival.\u201d Vultures saw Ye fully on the defensive, following his setting fire to every personal and professional bridge he had with a spree of antisemitic tirades<\/a> and antics \u2014 all of which is documented in the documentary In Whose Name?<\/a>, no less. After going on to release a song with the hook \u201cHeil Hitler\u201d (which incidentally played a role in the recent viral fame of \u201clooksmaxxing\u201d proponent Clavicular<\/a>), and getting booted from Shopify for selling merch with swastikas,\u00a0Ye had successfully shut himself out of mainstream conversation. He continued touring internationally to muted fanfare, and existed as something of a pariah in the States.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOver time, however, the culture on the ground became just as noxious as Ye\u2019s most unhinged instincts. Appalling as they were, Ye\u2019s rants now match up to everyday commentary on Musk-era Twitter. And he\u2019s been on something of an image rehabilitation tour. In January, in an interview<\/a> with Vanity Fair, Ye described ongoing complications from the 2002 car accident that famously left his jaw wired shut \u2014 the impetus for \u201cThrough the Wire,\u201d and arguably Ye\u2019s entire career. Coupled with a well-documented battle with bipolar disorder, it was enough for some to squint and almost begin to see Ye sympathetically.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is a blessing and a curse for the music on Bully, which is easily some of the best-sounding Kanye has made in years. The album opener, \u201cKing,\u201d is a standout and sounds something like Yeezus with smoother edges. Ye raps almost convincingly about the past few years of controversy, falling just short of saying anything impactful. Just before the song can reach any kind of emotional crest, we\u2019re thrust into the lackluster \u201cThis a Must,\u201d which rides a forgettable trap beat with even less inspired lyrics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFather,\u201d with Travis Scott, offers another bright spot, the pair\u2019s longstanding chemistry still intact, delivering a pitch-perfect 2010s banger sure to scratch the itch of those yearning for the days of 2016<\/a>. Elsewhere, like on \u201cAll the Love,\u201d Ye delivers some of his most melodically impressive work in recent memory, landing somewhere between his 808s-era melancholy and Life of Pablo extravagance. \u201cPunch Drunk,\u201d \u201cWhatever Works,\u201d and\u00a0 \u201cI Can\u2019t Wait\u201d all lean into the soul-sampling ethos of Ye\u2019s early releases, to admirable effect, and a red-hot Don Toliver arrives on \u201cCircles\u201d for a clear-eyed attempt at the kind of radio hit that once defined Ye\u2019s oeuvre.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, demos from Bully were leaked online featuring \u201cBully,\u201d \u201cHighs and Lows,\u201d and \u201cPreacher Man,\u201d which is the album\u2019s most recognizable single. The track takes Ye\u2019s flair for cinematics \u2014 think of the music videos for \u201cRunaway\u201d or \u201cBound 2\u201d \u2014 and fires on all cylinders. So much so, in fact, that rumors began swirling after the Bully leaks that Ye had been using AI to construct the album. The rumors became so widespread that, upon releasing the album last week, Ye himself had to clarify that he had not used AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe specifics, however, matter less than the feeling. Whether or not Ye used AI to make Bully, the album nonetheless feels like decades of his music fed into a computer program. While fans would have surely loved to get any of these songs over the past five years in lieu of the chaos of 2020s-era Ye, there\u2019s still an emptiness at the heart of Bully. The lines are all too clean, easily traceable, the opposite of what has made Ye a compelling artist for so long. In a way, it is his most human album to date, inasmuch as it proves that even stars as bright as Ye begin to dim with time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s possible that we didn\u2019t, in fact, want the old Kanye. Bully, the 12th studio album from Ye,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,17365,157,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-357404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-kanye-west","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}