BULLY

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BULLYStudio album by Kanye West
General information
Released	March 18, 2025 (BULLY V1) June 2025 (?)
Recorded	2024-present
Length	29:29
Producer(s)	Ye TheLabCook Ojivolta
Albums chronology
Previous	VULTURES 2
Next	DONDA 2
Singles
1. "BEAUTY AND THE BEAST" Released Feb. 9, 2025

BULLY is an upcoming solo studio album by Kanye West. It was originally set to release on his daughter North West's birthday, June 15, 2025, but has not yet officially released, and is later set to release 5 tracks on June 16 2025, 5 more tracks on June 17 2025, and more as time goes on. This was false. It is his first solo album since DONDA 2 and his recent endeavors into antisemitism. It is preceded by VULTURES 2, a collaborative album with Ty Dolla $ign that was released in August 2024. The album is named after an incident where his son, Saint West, kicked a kid because he considered them "weak," which explains Saint's appearance on the album cover.

An early version of the album, titled BULLY V1, was released by Ye on March 18, 2025 amid a Twitter rant, and later released as a music video on March 21, 2025 to generally positive reviews, with most praising its production.

Background

Main article: YEBU

After Donda 2 released on the Stem Player in February 2022, Ye began briefly working on his 11th studio album along with a collaborative project with James Blake and No I.D., titled WAR. However, the latter of which was eventually scrapped following Ye's antisemitic comments throughout the fall of 2022. While YEBU was still in the works in early 2023, work on the project would slow down and eventually stop altogether after Ye and Ty Dolla $ign began working on the VULTURES albums.

Kanye had later attempted to get in contact with Baby Keem, likely for solo work. Instead, however, Kanye had messaged a Baby Keem meme page. This is not the only time Kanye would make this mistake.

According to the CEO of Channel Candy, Ye had become very inspired following his and Ty's listening party in South Korea on August 23, 2024, and he had began work on a new solo album. It was also stated that he wanted to hold a bigger listening party in October.

On August 30, Ye announced that he would be holding a listening party in China. Noticeably, the announcement only included the Yen symbol to represent Ye, as opposed to all other listening party announcements in the VULTURES era, which also included a dollar sign for Ty Dolla $ign, which raised suspicion that the LP was for Ye's solo album. Although this listening party had been rebranded to a VULTURES listening party last minute with Ty Dolla $ign, Kanye had still previewed several new songs, among them being "PREACHER MAN" which he had stated was intended for his solo album. On September 28, during a VULTURES LP in China, Ye announced the title of his next solo album: BULLY, also previewing a new song from the album, titled "BEAUTY AND THE BEAST".

By October, Ye was seen with several past collaborators in Japan such as Baby Keem, Don Toliver, Sean Leon, Malik Yusef, and Che Pope. Kanye collaborator and writer Consequence had also reached out to Kanye, asking whether he should take to Tokyo as well. Several producers, such as SHDØW, The Legendary Traxster, and AyoAA, have also alluded to possible BULLY contributions. On October 15, Ye briefly posted "BEAUTY AND THE BEAST" in its entirety on Instagram along with a music video. Three days later, the video was released on Apple Music before being taken down the next day. On October 23, Ye posted the cover art for the album on Instagram. Two days later, the Yeezy website went live with BULLY merchandise and a preorder of the album.

A picture from one of the private BULLY listening parties.

In November, Gregor Estevan revealed that two private listening parties for BULLY had been held in Tokyo, Japan with 30-40 attendees. All of the attendees were required to sign NDAs and leave their phones at the entrance. The album was said to be very "playful and relaxed", with "lots of surprises". The producer VEYIS (who produced two VULTURES era songs "KEYS TO MY LIFE" and "DRUNK") has been said to have sent Kanye beats to record for the album. When leaking the 40-song track list for Bad Bitch Play Book, Saint Leon stated he would not reveal the 29th song due to it being in consideration for BULLY. However, he later revealed that the unknown track was "MATTHEW", implying that it may be in consideration for BULLY.

On December 7, Sean Leon would preview a demo song that was intended for BULLY on his Twitter. It's likely this song was recorded during his link-up with Kanye in October. It's unclear if this is a feature or a reference. The following day, it appeared that the vinyls to BULLY had began to ship out. It was reported that Ye was apparently "locked in his hotel room mostly in Tokyo working on his album, BULLY" in December. However, on December 25, fans found out that a portion of the Yeezy website dedicated to BULLY had been deleted, leading some to fear that the album may have been scrapped.

On January 4th, 2025, in Switzerland, a snippet of a song named "HIGHS AND LOWS," would be posted online. The video would last 29 seconds before Ye noticed the recorder and told them to stop recording. On January 13, Ye posted pictures of Mike Dean and Tony Williams on Instagram, seemingly hinting that both artists will be featured on BULLY.

On January 14-15, 2025 two snippets of BULLY era songs were leaked. One was a vocal version of "BULLY" (Jan. 14) and the other was one officially posted by Kanye West on his Instagram speculated to be titled "HIDE YOUR BITCH" (Jan. 15). Allegedly according to a Yeezy employee the "BULLY" leaked snippet was posted by Kanye's team on purpose. On January 29, Ye played several new songs at a club in Japan, two of which appear to be remixes of songs by Future ("LIL DEMON" and "Magic Don Juan (Princess Diana)"). As well, there was a song played speculated to be titled "DARK MATTER ". Another snippet featured vocals from North West.

On February 1, 2025, Kanye West posted a Yeezy Supply ad to his X. This ad featured a song titled "CAN'T HURRY LOVE." Two days later, Ye made an appearance at the Grammy's afterparty, where he previewed several songs from the album. He also revealed that BULLY will feature AI vocals, as he compared it to autotune and compared BULLY to 808s & Heartbreak. Finally, he announced that BULLY will be releasing on North West's birthday, June 15.

On February 9, following a lengthy and highly controversial Twitter rant, Ye dropped "BEAUTY AND THE BEAST" on the Yeezy website. On February 23, during Bianca Censori's film premiere Ye previewed two songs most likely intended for BULLY.

According to Hogan, sometime in mid to late March of 2025, Trippie Redd came to Japan to work on BULLY.

On April 7, 2025, a groupbuy was successfully purchased which included an October 18, copy of BULLY.

Release (V1)

On March 18 and 19, 2025, Ye released three versions of the album, all of which were accompanied with a visual film for the album, which featured several songs from the album and was dated December 2024. Ye also announced plans to re-record the AI vocals, along with an official release of his 2022 demo album, Donda 2. He also revealed that he may not release the album on streaming services because of "Jewish and French record labels".

On March 22, an earlier version of the album, titled BULLY V1, was released onto Ye's YouTube channel. This version was created in November 2024 and excluded the album's closing track, "MELROSE".

For a long time, no information or confirmation related to BULLY was previewed until May 16, 2025, when Ye was photographed in Spain wearing a BULLY t-shirt.

On May 24, 2025, Ye reiterated that BULLY would be released on June 15, 2025 in an interview. He also stated that the vinyl pre-order for BULLY on the Yeezy store sold 30,000 units in total.

Just one day before the initial release of Bully meant for June 15, Ian Connor took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to share a conversation he had with Ye. In this conversation, Ian showed Ye a tweet from a fan asking if he was going to promote Bully. Ye simply responded, "Which album is that". This indicates that he did not intend to drop Bully on the 15th.

On the same day, Bianca Censori shared a snippet of a new song by Ye, which is speculated by some to be from BULLY.

Artwork

The grillz being worked on.

As previously stated, the official cover art for BULLY was revealed on October 23, 2024. The cover art was designed by Daidō Moriyama, and the person shown in the artwork is Kanye's son, Saint West.

In November, Omar Alvarado (the jeweler and owner of Don Rosé) was interviewed by RapTV and revealed his involvement in the BULLY cover art. He stated that Aus Taylor reached out to him to recreate Ye's teeth design for Saint, but in the form of grills. He also had a very tight deadline of 2 days, so Omar immediately got to work on the grillz. He finished the initial design on Friday, created the wax model on Saturday, and moved on to casting, polishing, and fitting by Sunday. That night, Omar took a flight to Japan and personally delivered the grillz the next day. Omar stated that he had no idea that Saint would be wearing the grillz for the BULLY cover art, and described the process of making them as "intense".

On March 15, 2025, Ye claimed that the album cover for BULLY would be a picture of a red swastika. He took down the post shortly afterward.

Track List

See also: BULLY/Unreleased.

BULLY V1 standard edition
No.	Title	Length
1.	"PREACHER MAN"	3:01
2.	"CAN'T HURRY LOVE"	1:53
3.	"WHITE LINES"	2:58
4.	"CIRCLES"	2:42
5.	"BULLY"	2:42
6.	"LAST BREATH"	2:05
7.	"LOSING YOUR MIND"	3:33
8.	"BEAUTY AND THE BEAST"	1:47
9.	"THIS ONE HERE"	3:18
10.	"HIGHS AND LOWS"	1:48
11.	"MELROSE" (featuring Ty Dolla $ign and Playboi Carti)	3:41
Total length:		29:29

• This goes off of the latest track list for the album film dating back to December.

Trivia

• The demo project of this album entitled "V1" is the last project Ye had released under the moniker of Kanye West. Past this point, West changed his primary stagename to Ye and released DONDA 2 under the streaming name "DONDA".

References

BULLY
Singles "BEAUTY AND THE BEAST" Other tracks "PREACHER MAN" • "CAN'T HURRY LOVE" • "WHITE LINES" • "CIRCLES" • "BULLY" • "LAST BREATH" • "LOSING YOUR MIND" • "THIS ONE HERE" • "HIGHS AND LOWS" • "MELROSE" Chronology Previous • Next