Kanye West Announces ‘Bully’ Release Date, Teases AI-Driven Production
Kanye West has officially announced that his upcoming album, Bully, will be released on June 15, a date chosen in honour of his daughter, North West. The rapper revealed the news during an interview with Justin Laboy, which premiered at an event in Los Angeles on Sunday night.
“My oldest said we got to drop it in June,” Kanye shared, referencing North, who then asked, “Didn’t Yeezus come out on your birthday?” He confirmed the connection and added, “We’re gonna bring Bully out on her birthday ‘cause that’s her favourite album.”
The project marks Kanye’s 11th solo studio album and will be his first since Donda in 2021.
AI and the Future of Music
During the interview, Kanye also hinted at integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the album’s production – a move he previously experimented with on his Vultures collaborations with Ty Dolla $ign.
“People are like, ‘Stay away from AI.’ It’s a more negative reaction than Auto-Tune,” he noted, comparing AI’s reception to the initial scepticism surrounding pitch correction in music. “As an artist, I can take anything. I can sell a piece of sh*t for $10 million [laughs]. AI is in the same family [as Auto-Tune], except people have a more visceral reaction.”
Explaining how he uses AI in his creative process, Kanye said, “Right now, you can take any song, separate the vocals, just get the bassline, the drums—completely separate it. So when I send a song or sample to my engineers, I just say, ‘JS, AI.’ My engineer John Scott. It’s like we’re speaking AI.”
To demonstrate, he played a snippet of an unreleased track, which appeared to feature AI-generated vocals.
A Personal and Independent Vision
Kanye’s son, Saint West, inspired the album’s title and will also appear on its cover. According to Kanye, the name Bully stemmed from an incident where Saint playfully kicked another child while playing, influencing the project’s theme.
The album is also expected to be a return to Kanye’s roots as a producer, following the blueprint of The College Dropout. Unlike his past projects, which featured multiple collaborators, Bully will reportedly be a solo production effort, with Kanye handling most of the work himself.
“Kanye is now living in Tokyo, staying in a hotel and hard at work on Bully,” journalist Touré reported last year. “It’s a concept album, and he plans to be the only producer on it. A fresh chapter in his life – because in Tokyo, he can be who he wants to be.”
Despite no official single release, Kanye has teased multiple tracks from the album, building anticipation for what could be one of his most experimental and self-driven projects yet.
