Kanye West dropped Bully this past weekend, much to the surprise of fans and the media. In the past, Ye has always been known to delay his albums and leave fans hanging. However, this time around, he came up clutch, despite making fans wait about 24 hours.
While some fans believe Bully is a return to form for Ye, there are others who believe the album is just more of the same. A soulless take on the sound that made him famous. Regardless of these criticisms, the album is getting a lot of love on streaming services. In its first day on Spotify, it had over 30 million streams, which is the strongest hip-hop debut of the year.
This success has led to predictions about how many first-week sales Bully will amass. Despite his indiscretions, Ye remains one of the biggest artists in the world. It stands to reason that he would be able to garner a strong first-week showing.
Bully On Track For Strong First Week Sales
According to WorldStarHipHop, projections from Hits Daily Double suggest that Ye could very well end up with 250K-275K first week units. As per predictions from Kalshi, 100K of these units could be from pure album sales. Vinyls for Bully were selling out fast, and that could be reflected in the first week's numbers.
With that being said, the numbers will be handicapped by the fact that West decided to release the album on a Saturday as opposed to Friday. There will be one less day of reporting, which certainly impacts how the final sales numbers will fall.
Regardless, these numbers can be seen as a triumph for Ye given recent events. There was a time when people felt like he was done. Now, fans are showing that they still have room in their hearts for the artist.
Ye's decision to drop the Nazi aesthetic has certainly led to some good PR. His apology in the Wall Street Journal has also led to this resurgence. Whether or not Ye can keep this going is something that still very much remains to be seen.
Furthermore, there are still skeptical fans who aren't there yet when it comes to forgiving him. Ultimately, Ye still has a lot to do before anyone can say for sure that "he's back."
