A new album from Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, is set to arrive on March 20. The rapper has inked a partnership deal with the independent music company Gamma for the release of Bully, his 12th studio album.
Ye began recording Bully more than three years ago, even going so far as to release an accompanying short film edited by Hype Williams and starring his son, Saint West, in March 2025. The timeline for the version of the album arriving in March is unclear, but Rolling Stone has confirmed that Bully was completed before the publication of Ye’s recent ad in the Wall Street Journal.
In the ad, which took the form of a page-long open letter, Ye apologized for his many years of antisemitic and other controversial comments, grappled with his bipolar disorder diagnosis, addressed selling swastika merch, and reflected on letting the Black community down. (The letter did not directly address any of the legal claims he’s currently facing, including a sexual harassment, assault, and wrongful termination lawsuit that was brought by his former assistant in 2024. Through a spokesperson, West previously denied the accusations.) “I’m not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness,” the letter read. “I write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”
A press release states that Bully will capture Ye in these moments as he wrestles with “remorse, memory, ego, faith, and consequence.” The release also claims that while the album is meant to be a documentation of his internal experience during this time, it does not double or function as an apology or redemptive effort. With Bully, Ye is said to be “using music as storytelling rather than defense.”
His previous solo full-length release, Donda 2, was released in 2022 via the audio remix device Stem Player, then in an edited form in 2025 via Ye’s brand YZY. Yeezy also paid for the WSJ ad space.
In a review of the initially released version of Bully, Rolling Stone noted that, according to Ye, half of the vocals on the album were A.I., but added that there were clear moments that showed glimmers of his past. “On ‘Bully,’ Ye sounds like he did on 808’s and Heartbreak, where he used Auto-Tune to build a whining crescendo — a dramatic effect for a man at his limit emotionally,” the review read, adding, “Bully had some juice — more life than any of his post-The Life of Pablo work.”
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