Bully, Kanye West’s first album post-apology, has received a 3.4 out of 10 rating from Pitchfork, which stated that the rapper returned to music as a “hollowed-out shell of his former self.” Bully, Ye’s highly anticipated album, created buzz online when it was released on March 28, 2026, as it marked his return to his roots as an artist following his antisemitism controversy and a full-length apology ad in The Wall Street Journal in January 2026.

The 18-track album included features from Travis Scott, Peso Pluma, CeeLo Green, and Don Toliver, among others. On April 1, 20206, Pitchfork published its review of Bully, giving it a meagre rating of 3.4 out of 10. The music publication called the project a “cheap hit of retro-Kanye—a copy of the classic spectacle.” It further suggested that the album was filled with “weak introspection and feeble, characterless music,” adding:

“Even at his bleakest moments of self-professed nitrous and porn addiction, when he was prohibited from seeing his children, he still knew how to make a song. Bully’s real curveball is the lack of Ye, even after he re-recorded it with human vocals. He’s on every track but also somehow none of them, making a case for redemption and not sounding very convinced by it himself.”

Pitchfork’s rating of Bully seemed to draw divisive responses from netizens on X, with one user questioning:

“Are they rating the album or the person? Lmaooo.”

Several fans felt the publication was too harsh with its rating.

However, others claimed that the rating was deserved and even suggested it deserved to be rated lower.

Meanwhile, Rolling Stone gave Bully 2.5 stars out of 5 in a review on March 31, stating the album felt “lifeless overall” and more like Ye’s “greatest-hits compilation.” The publication also addressed widespread rumors of the rapper using AI to create the album, writing:

“Whether or not Ye used AI to make Bully, the album nonetheless feels like decades of his music fed into a computer program.”

Kanye West’s Bully topped Spotify charts despite underwhelming critical reviews

Kanye West’s Bully made waves on Spotify despite critics’ underwhelming response, and topped Spotify’s top albums chart following its release on March 28, 2026. According to Rolling Stone, ten songs from the 18-track list have debuted on Spotify’s chart of top songs worldwide.

Gamma, which distributed the album, claimed that it drew approximately 50 million streams on the first day, making it the largest single-day total for a hip-hop artist on Spotify in 2026.

However, the album was not without its fair share of controversy, and its rollout was plagued by speculation that Kanye West had used AI. However, days before the album’s release, West took to X to release the album’s tracklist with the caption, “BULLY ON THE WAY NO AI.”

Following the album’s release, English singer and record producer James Blake requested that Ye remove his production credit from the album in response to fans speculating that AI was used on the track This One Here. In a comment on his Vault social media platform, Blake suggested that the released version of the song did not align with his original version, writing:

“The way I pitched his vocals and constructed the track from his freestyle is partially there, majorly peppered with other newer vocal takes etc. But the spirit of my actual production is mostly absent other than that. My original version is a completely different production in spirit. Happy for the fans but I’ve asked to be taken off the producer credits for now as I don’t want to take credit for other people’s work and this version isn’t what I created with Ye.”

According to Billboard, he also clarified that his reasoning for wanting to remove his name from the production credit was “not personal,” adding that he had “hit a point where don’t want to be credited on music where I can’t affect the end result.”

In other news, Kanye West is scheduled to headline all three days of the Wireless Festival from July 10 to July 12 at Finsbury Park, London.