Ye (Kanye West)’s “Father” and its parent album, Bully, are streaming now.
The music video for “Father” — featuring an appearance by Travis Scott who comes in for his verse on the track, and set in a church minimalist in design but layered with goings-on worth a second look — is a single-camera scene directed by Bianca Censori.
Ye hasn’t said anything about its meaning, or anything about it at all, but his “Father” video plays out like a commentary on religion, reality and the ennui of modern society.
Here, a fellow’s card tricks turning to flames are as unremarkable as the knitting granny in an adjacent pew. A police squad, preceded by a plate-armoured knight arriving down the aisle via horse, arrests a nun from her slumber. Michael Jackson (his lookalike, at least) sits alone, quietly unbothered in the last row. The touchdown of a UFO seems inconsequential, with stars Ye and Scott pulling down masks showing they already play both celebrity and extraterrestrial.
All of the above goes largely unnoticed to churchgoers in “Father.”
All the while Ye’s chorus goes: “Bye-bye to my old self/ Wake up to the new me/ I used to be on Worldstar/ Now I’m making Newsweek/ I used to hang on the 9/ Now I bought two streets/ Cottage Grove to King Drive/ Yeah, this life is a movie.”
Ye’s Bully album hit streaming services early Saturday (March 28) just ahead of two upcoming shows in Los Angeles, where he’ll perform at SoFi Stadium on April 1 and 3.
The 18-song collection, clocking in at a concise 42 minutes, has track titles that feature Don Toliver (“Circles”), Peso Pluma (“Last Breath”), CeeLo Green (“Bully”) and Ye’s music director Andre Troutman (“All the Love,” “White Lines”) in addition to the Travis Scott-assisted “Father.”
Bully is his first album release to follow the antisemitic remarks and erratic online posts that had him in headlines in recent years, for which he’s since taken out a full-page apology ad in The Wall Street Journal to address and to seek forgiveness. “One of the difficult aspects of having bipolar type-1 are the disconnected moments — many of which I still cannot recall — that led to poor judgment and reckless behavior that oftentimes feels like an out-of-body-experience,” Ye wrote in January. “I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment and meaningful change. It does not excuse what I did, though.”
