Kanye West‘s team have responded to speculation that upcoming record ‘BULLY’ will feature AI, following the release date and tracklist being shared.
Late last month, the controversial rapper made a surprise appearance at a comedy gig at the Hollywood Improv and announced a new album was coming. He’d first shared news of ‘Bully’ back in 2024 during a listening event in China, where he debuted the song ‘Beauty And The Beast’ from the record – which he later went on to share in the form of a short film.
Since then, the album rollout has been characteristically chaotic and delayed, prompting several questions from fans. Chief among them was the release date, which, according to screenshots of emails seemingly from the Yeezy Support team, is due out on January 30.
As for the use of AI on the album, those close to Kanye have denied it. Pete Jideonwo, a music exec thought to be his current manager, can be seen in screenshots circulating X/Twitter that there would be no AI on ‘Bully’.
Jideonwo accompanied Ye at a recent meeting with prominent New York rabbi Yosef Pinto to “take accountability” for his anti-Semitic remarks.
Milo Yiannopoulos also took to X to confirm this as well. The far-right British commentator left his role as Yeezy’s former chief of staff left after Kanye announced an adult entertainment division at the company, but is reportedly still very close to his team.
There is no AI on BULLY according to Peter Jideonwo (Ye's current manager) pic.twitter.com/YyiE2lT8CY
— yeunrlsd (@yeunrlsd) January 3, 2026
For those who need to hear it from a white man
No AI on Bully
— MILO (@Nero) January 3, 2026
The ‘Bully’ tracklist Is:
Side 1 –
‘Preacher Man’
‘Beauty And The Beast’
‘Last Breath’
‘White Lines’
‘I Can’t Wait’
‘Bully’
‘All The Love’
Side 2 –
‘This One Here’
‘Highs And Lows’
‘Mission Control’
‘Circles’
‘Damn’
The conversation around AI in music is increasing as it floods streaming platforms with no sign of slowing down, much to the dismay of some of the industries biggest names.
In February last year, Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox and over 1,000 more artists released a silent album in protest against AI being used in music and changes to copyright AI laws planned by the UK government.
By the end of 2024, a stark warning was issued in a study that showed people working in music were likely to lose a quarter of their income to AI over the next four years, and, early this year, streaming platform Deezer stated that around 10,000 AI-generated tracks were submitted to the platform daily – making up around 10 per cent of all its music uploads.
In May, McCartney, Elton John, Coldplay, Dua Lipa, Florence Welch, Kate Bush and Robbie Williams were among the 400 artists to sign a letter, asking for Keir Starmer to back proposals that would protect copyrighted artistic works from AI infringement.
Other artists also pushed for the PM to protect the work of creatives ahead of a UK-US tech deal laid out during Donald Trump’s visit in September.
West has had his own trouble with the software after being dragged into “AI beef” when Bhad Bhabie and Alabama Barker traded diss tracks last year.
When BULLY drops with no AIpic.twitter.com/iYWaJRQTrl
— yeunrlsd (@yeunrlsd) January 3, 2026
West’s most recent albums are the 2024 collaborative projects ‘Vultures 1‘ and ‘Vultures 2’ with Ty Dolla $ign.
Since then, he has mainly been in the news for the many anti-Semitic tirades he’s launched online over the past few years, which have seen him be banned from X/Twitter and Instagram multiple times over comments which violate their policies on hate speech.
As well as tirades on social media, Ye also began selling a white T-shirt with a large swastika on the chest earlier this year, leading to Shopify shutting down his Yeezy website. West would then hit out at the move, and claim that he had the idea for the shirt for years.
Before then, he said in a 2023 documentary that he believed Jewish people were working together to “hold him back”, and the year before, he provoked widespread backlash after telling Jewish people to “forgive Hitler”.
That same year, West said that he “doesn’t believe” in the term anti-Semitism, and sparked backlash from the likes of many, including Piers Morgan, who told Ye that he didn’t “think you understand the pain you’ve been causing with some of these comments.”
Others to have hit out at the comments are Jamie Lee Curtis, voice actor John DiMaggio, Diane Warren, and Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff. After the widespread condemnation of his tweets, West would then go on to say that he wanted to “hug every Jewish person,” and explained that he was jealous of several aspects of Jewish culture.
As aforementioned, the rapper recently met up with a prominent New York rabbi called Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto to “take accountability” for the hurt caused, and apologise for his bipolar disorder allegedly causing him to lash out at the Jewish community.