Kanye West Drops Long-Delayed Bully Album
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- Kanye West released his long-delayed album Bully to streaming services, debuting it at a Los Angeles listening event on Friday, March 27, before taking the YouTube premiere down the following morning.
- West has been teasing Bully since September 2024, the month after releasing Vultures 2 with Ty Dolla $ign, and shared the short film Bully V1 on X in 2025 starring his son Saint, who also appears on the album's cover.
- West previously said a significant portion of Bully was made using AI, a claim he walked back this week as the album finally dropped.
- The 14-track Bully features Travis Scott, CeeLo Green, André Troutman, Nine Vicious, and Ty$, and includes previously previewed cuts "Preacher Man" and "Beauty and the Beast."
- Since Vultures 2, West has been sued for alleged sexual battery by former assistant Lauren Pisciotta and for alleged sexual assault by a model who appeared in a 2024 music video; Pisciotta said in a 2025 filing she went into hiding from a swatting campaign she alleges West orchestrated.
- In 2026, West placed a full-page Wall Street Journal ad apologizing for past behavior and citing bipolar disorder and a 2002 car crash brain injury, but the statement did not address the sexual misconduct allegations; the ad was paid for by Yeezy and co-signed by CFO Hussein Lalani.
Why it matters: Bully is West's first major release since Vultures 2 — a period defined by sexual misconduct lawsuits, antisemitic posts praising Hitler, and a 2026 WSJ apology that conspicuously omitted those allegations. With the AI-generation claim walked back at launch, the rollout tests whether the music industry and audiences will engage with the project on its own terms.
