BULLY

Before I start, I’d like to draw attention to some really disgusting behavior I’ve seen from the community around this album. Basically, an artist called Pomme refused to clear a sample to HIGHS AND LOWS, which was probably the most anticipated song on the album, because of moral disagreements with Ye. And the way everyone has been treating Pomme over this single fucking sample is genuinely so gross. People calling her a bitch, a whore, I saw someone on Reddit say that she’s always miserable because her wife is ugly. Even OnThatNote, a youtuber I was following for updates on the album, called her a bitch. It’s so gross to see. This entire community is just full of stupid chuds who will throw a tantrum when something doesn’t go their way. Grow the fuck up and leave Pomme alone.

Even though the original HIGHS AND LOWS sounded incredible, I think it’s incredibly based that Pomme said no. “But he apologized!” Nazi or not, Ye is still a huge piece of shit. At least Pomme is consistent in her beliefs, unlike a certain producer whose name starts with J and ends with MAFIA who is *supposedly* a leftist but had a sniveling crashout on twitter because SuperHitler Ye wouldn’t hire him to work on SuperHitler Vultures 1.

So, where are we at with Ye, in the big 26? After an incredibly tumultuous couple of years, which also saw him releasing his absolute worst music, it seems we are in an era of renewal for him. Throwing the nazi stuff behind, removing his titanium grillz and reuniting with the likes of Travis Scott, it looks like he’s doing a hard reset on his entire brand. This is something he’s never done before. He’s always just toughed out the drama and made everybody forget by releasing some fantastically good album to make everyone forget. But we all know that Ye is kinda incapable of making any fantastically good albums anymore, so he realized he was fucked and had to approach this particular controversy in a different way.

As someone who was banking on this being mid, and after the vinyls shipping and us getting to hear what it sounds like, set on this being absolutely awful, it is incredibly surprising to be saying that Bully is… kinda good. By that, I mean it addressed most of the problems I had with the VULTURES albums and DONDA 2. The 808s don’t turn everything into mud, the lyrics aren’t creepy bullshit, it’s actually Ye rapping and not some uncanny facsimile transplanted onto Dave Blunts, and his mic quality is actually decent and he sounds okay. So Ye’s learned from his mistakes, that’s good.

But the album still has a whole lot of its own issues. First of all, it’s clearly not finished. Tracks like THIS A MUST or HIGHS AND LOWS feel like demos or proof-of-concepts rather than actual full songs. Especially THIS A MUST, which is a staggering minute and a half of an incredibly poorly mixed vocal performance over a single loop. In fact, most of the songs stay in the lane of 1.5 - 2.5 minutes, really giving the vibe that this is not supposed to be a full album experience and just a mixtape of demos. Given the fact that the album was specifically delayed at the last minute to fix mixing, and it still being ass, really makes me wonder how they run things over at Gamma. From here, they kinda just look like an absolute circus trying to finish this album and failing horribly.

Ye also just sounds brutally soulless. Despite it being actually him and not some AI, which would actually be soulless, it really doesn’t sound like he’s into the music anymore. On tracks like KING and PREACHER MAN, he sounds like some sulky kid that’s being forced to replace the AI, and is just phoning in a limp performance. It really makes you wonder whether Ye even has the heart to keep making music anymore. I genuinely feel like he only released this so he could leave his career off on a somewhat high note (and also because his fanbase would drag him to the centre of the town square and hang him if he didn’t). He’s obviously trying to raise a successor in North, whose production skills shine on this album, so maybe he’s really planning to pack it up here.

PREACHER MAN is easily the worst song here. Yep, it’s still AI. How difficult is it to rerecord a single verse, especially with how low-effort the rerecords actually are? Even the rerecorded sections sound so incredibly limp and lethargic. And I’m sorry, the production on this song is absolutely awful. Ye took the sample, isolated the vocals, pitched them up and stuck some weird muffling effect over it, resulting in a muddy and weird beat that has basically removed any of the swing or vibe of the original sample. The most enjoyable part of this song is actually the ending, where Ye lets the full sample kick in. That being said, he still put some weird muffling effect over it, making it sound worse than if he just left it alone.

PUNCH DRUNK is a song whose production i’m really impressed with. It’s very chaotic and scattershot with its sample flip, but still manages to have a really fun swing to it. Ye’s vocals over it are also really great (Punch drunk hung overrr). If North really produced this, I think we’re in good hands after Ye retires.

WHITE LINES sounds super tragic to me. Andre Troutman’s voice is super disorted and mangled, he sounds like some broken robot trying to sing. It reminds me of that Daisy Bell song a robot tried to sing, and paired with the lyrics and melody Andre is singing, it feels super tragic to me.

Banishing all memories of the previous version, HIGHS AND LOWS is incredibly mid. The beat doesn’t go anywhere, and this would have easily been a highlight of the album if Ye actually let some drums kick in and rapped an actual verse. It sounds epic for the first 20 seconds, and then gets old because it just keeps looping. I also think transplanting the exact same vocal melody from the original beat onto this was a bad move, because it definitely doesn’t sound like it fits in some places (Nobody’s bigger than the program, till you bigger than the program).

LAST BREATH is actually laughable. Why did Ye think it was a good idea to try and rap in spanish? This is exactly like that Meet Your Padre song Drake did. I think Ye deserves to get clowned for this track just as much as Drake did. And I’m not even gonna touch on the fact that Peso Pluma sounds super goofy, and that his chorus is now in the minor key for some reason, which really throws me off everytime I listen to it. Oh wait, I just did.