Months after renouncing his antisemitic comments, Kanye West announced that he was giving up on something that troubled his fans just as much: AI.
Posting to his Instagram account last Wednesday, ‘Ye once again, revealed that his new album, Bully, wouldn’t include work that used any AI technology, which is a bit of a 180 turn.
As recently as last year, he had compared AI to Auto-Tune—a tool to enhance what already existed—and admitted he was using it for Bully. For folks who miss the “Old Kanye”—originally a nod to any Yeezy between 03 and 07, but now probably any version between then and The Life of Pablo—it was evidence that he could return to form. A respite from those filthy AI vocal slip-ups seen on Vultures 2.
Teased since 2024, Bully was being presented as a good ol’ fashion, non-GMO Kanye. He was even flipping samples himself. So it's just too bad it doesn't sound like it. He’s really trying—almost every song is carried by soulful samples—but the album is plagued by lethargic vocals, drab choruses, and trite lyricism. At times it's so broad and devoid of the heart and passion seen in Kanye's most successful albums, a careful listener can accuse Bully of being produced by GROK—using the prompt "give me a good Kanye album."
Bully’s lack of specificity
First off, this Bully isn’t the same as the one that leaked last year. It stretches about 13 minutes longer. On this version, it’s Don Toliver holding down hook duties for “Circles” instead of ‘Ye himself. The Playboi Carti and Ty Dolla $ign-assisted “Melrose” has been removed after a reported rift between Yeezy and Carti.
Like the worst of his post The Life of Pablo output, Bully is a spacey cloud of glossy hollowness. Most of the rapping meanders, kept afloat by stadium-status basslines and interstellar synths that could soundtrack a solar flare. Some of it still hits. “Preacher Man” features a nice blend of charisma and cinema. Blending a Lebanese sample with tribal drums, a wailing melody, and celestial synth lines, “All the Love” sounds like Lion King in Space. Vague and platitudinal as it is, the hook is symbolic enough to feel cathartic, too. With its chipmunk soul and some increasingly rare examples of wry wit,
“Whatever Works” feels incomplete, but the hook that’s there, along with a soul chop as makes it all oddly infectious.
But for every “All the Love” there’s a track like “King,” where Ye threads an overwrought, “let the sample fill-in the space of the hook” structure for an empty concept song. His requisite Travis Scott collaboration, “Father,” carries a cool-sounding prestige soundscape, but Kanye's bars are so indistinct I would've preferred LaFlame get the song all to himself.
There's just a general lack of era specificity on the track, which is emblematic of the album as a whole. Bars like “I used to be on WorldStar, now I’m on Newsweek” feel anachronistic for a billionaire who dropped his first album 22 years ago.
Bully features mild traces of Kanye West greatness
Comparing Kanye’s tonal inflections from Bully to even Vultures 1 can feel jarring. Comparing either of those to any of his first six albums and you’ll feel like you’re listening to a totally different person. The “Old Kanye” rapped like he was always trying to get the folks in the Roc-A-Fella office to give a fuck. There was a propulsion to his enunciation, and he rapped with a decisive diction that made it sound like he was shouting in your ear. “Yeah, that tuxedo might have been a little guido/But with my ego, I can stand there in a Speedo and get looked at like a fucking hero!,” he rapped on Graduation’s “Glory.” The “ck” in fuck rings through like an exclamation point. Here, we get a lot of ellipses.
For Bully, Kanye raps at a plodding, wandering place like he’s reading lyrics off a teleprompter for the first time.
Without Ty Dolla $ign stabilizing things with his competence, or a Rich The Kid to supply him with quirky deviance (“Carnival”), the choruses here don’t do anything to elevate the lyrics either. For tracks like “Back to Me” and “Carnival” Ye supplied enough electricity to make you feel like he was excited.
Shifting between his albums, the contrast between this Kanye and the good one becomes even more frustrating. He used to be “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” and now it sounds like he doesn’t want to tell us anything.
The biggest tell is how many songs signal to older Kanye classics without understanding what works. “Sisters and Brothers” sounds like “I Wonder” without the wonder. “Highs and Lows” feels like “Wolves” without teeth. The aforementioned “Father” wants to be Yeezus cut; it just doesn’t bang like one.
In some ways, Bully is a continuation of recent tradition. Over the last 10 years, Kanye has prioritized big, ornate sounds rather than focus—like he was trying to recreate the immaculate “All of the Lights” every time he hit the studio. Back then, and even intermittently on projects like the Dondas or Vultures 1, his conviction and instincts for aesthetics overrode scatter-brained lyricism. This time they didn’t quite manage, and as Kanye’s maximal sonics have become normalized, even the sounds don’t feel as cool as they once did.
If you squint your ears a bit, you can hear mild traces of Yeezy greatness. But ultimately, Bully feels like Kanye searching through the crates for past glory. He says he didn’t include AI here, but the result is the same—something that imitates greatness instead of creating it.
