James Blake has asked for his production credit to be removed from Kanye West’s new album, Bully, but not for the reasons you’d expect when someone asks to be uncoupled from anything Ye-related these days.
Blake is credited on Bully’s final track, “This One Here,” and it’s a song he definitely worked on; Blake confirmed as much when Ye premiered an earlier version of the song at a nightclub event in 2022. But in a message shared on the social media platform Vault, Blake said the “spirit” of his contribution was no longer present in the final cut.
“The way I pitched his vocals and constructed the track from his freestyle is partially there, majorly peppered with other newer vocal takes etc,” Blake wrote. “But the spirit of my actual production is mostly absent other than that. My original version is a completely different production in spirit.”
Blake added: “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.”
The musician further stressed that this was a creative choice, rather than anything related to the countless controversies Ye has embroiled himself in these past few years (and is ostensibly trying to move past). “It’s not personal,” Blake said. “I just hit a point where [I] don’t want to be credited on music where I can’t affect the end result.”
A rep for Ye did not immediately return Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
Talk of various collaborations between Blake and West has abounded for years, but little has actually come of it. In the mid-2010s, the two heaped mutual praise on each other, and reports emerged that they’d spent time in the studio together, but nothing was ever released. At one point, West was expected to appear on Blake’s 2016 album, The Color in Anything, but a verse on the track “Timeless” never came to fruition. Finally, in 2024, Blake appeared on West and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 1 project, contributing production the song, “Talking / Once Again.”
As for Ye, he finally released Bully last Friday, March 28, marking his first proper solo album since 2022’s Donda 2.And Blake just released a new solo album of his own, Trying Times.