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In a Perfect World (Kanye West album)

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In a Perfect World
Cover art for IN A PERFECT WORLD: a picture of two klansmen, one in red and one in white, in front of a stack of hay bales.
Studio album by
Kanye West
ReleasedTBA
RecordedFebruary 2025–present
Genre
Length30:11
LabelYZY
Producer
Kanye West chronology
Never Stop
(2025) 		In a Perfect World
(TBA)
Singles from In a Perfect World
  1. "WW3"
    Released: March 26, 2025
  2. "Cousins"
    Released: April 21, 2025
  3. "Heil Hitler"
    Released: May 8, 2025

In a Perfect World[1] is the upcoming thirteenth studio album by American rapper Kanye West. Media personality DJ Akademiks announced the album under the title WW3 during a live stream on April 2, 2025, a week after the track of the same name was released as a single on March 26. The album would soon be renamed to Cuck, with the stylization CUKKK being considered during production.

Amid the surprise release of demos for his preceding visual album Bully the month prior, West caused controversy by making antisemitic statements, supporting Nazism, and posting offensive remarks[2]—as well as revealing childhood incest involving his male cousin on his Twitter account. The latter remark tied into the album's second single, "Cousins", released on April 21. The third single, "Heil Hitler", was released on May 8.

American rapper Dave Blunts, who first met West in February 2025, has been cited as the album's sole songwriter by multiple sources, including West himself. Blunts makes several uncredited guest appearances on the album, and contributes vocals on the song "Bianca". Quadwoofer and Sheffmade, two producers who have heavily collaborated with Blunts, are the album's primary producers.[3] Che Pope, Digital Nas, and Templecitygrounds also helped in producing the album, alongside West himself.

An unfinished version of the album was leaked on May 18, 2025, following a charity group buy; the proceeds of the leak were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Blunts has also published multiple reference tracks that he created for the album online.[4] On June 22, West posted to Twitter that he may be changing the album name from Cuck to In a Perfect World.[5] He later posted "In a Perfect World", implying it was the new title for the album.[6]

Background

[edit]
See also: Views of Kanye West § 2025

February: West meets Dave Blunts

[edit]

In February 2025, West met Dave Blunts and they started working on an album together.[7] According to West, he and Blunts would spend hours talking to each other, and Blunts would write three songs a day based off their conversations.[8] Regarding the creation of album track "Cousins", Blunts recalled:

"Cousins" was one of [my songs] that got picked. I really liked that song, because he had told me about the situation with him and his cousin, and I could tell that the song was very freeing for him when I made it. I believe that he chose me to write songs because I have a blunt approach to it, and that's the way that this song needed to be. I mean, it happened exactly like I said in the song, no double entendres. Just, like, "I gave him head."[9]

On a June 2025 episode of the Dope As Usual podcast, Blunts would give several more insights into his work on the album. According to him, West asked him to write the entirety of Cuck only a day after they met, a meeting arranged by West's agent. Blunts stated that he usually spent 20-30 minutes on each reference track, but once rewrote a track upwards of twenty times at West's request. He based his lyrics off of phone calls he'd have with West (which he described as being "sporadic" in frequency), as well as tweets that West was making at the time.[3]

Blunts has repeatedly denied that the lyrical content of In a Perfect World is antisemitic, describing the album as being "about one man going between hurt, betrayal and pain and he's putting that shit down..."[10]

Promotion

[edit]

March–May: Album rollout and singles

[edit]

On March 6, West stated that his upcoming music would feature an "antisemitic sound".[11][12][13] On March 16, he posted images of a Nazi swastika and the sig runes of the Schutzstaffel, claiming them to be his "new album cover" and "new Sunday Service logo", respectively.[14]

West first teased the song "WW3" on March 15 on his Twitter account.[15] Prior to its release, Blunts and streamer Adin Ross had reacted to the song; the latter initially expressed negative feelings,[16] but would later seem to enjoy the song when reacting to it on stream with rapper Kodak Black.[17] West released "WW3" as a single on March 26.[16] On March 30, DJ Akademiks held an interview in which West wore a black Ku Klux Klan-inspired outfit and made further controversial remarks, including stating that he regrets having children with his ex-wife Kim Kardashian. He made negative remarks about various other celebrities, including Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Playboi Carti, Kendrick Lamar, and the late Virgil Abloh.[18][19] The following day, West released the music video to "WW3" on Twitter. The video contains a repurposed scene from the American television miniseries Roots alongside graphic sexual imagery featuring interracial sex and footage of a KKK gathering.[20]

On April 2, DJ Akademiks announced that the album, initially titled WW3, would be released the next day, and shared the track listing.[21] Akademiks also previewed the track "Bianca"; the lyrics of the track concern West's separation from his wife Bianca Censori, pleading with her to "come back".[22] When the album failed to drop on April 3, West revealed the album cover, which depicts a male and female Klan member wearing white and red KKK-inspired outfits, respectively, posing in front of a stack of hay bales.[23] The album cover is an edited version of the 2015 photo The wedding of two members of the KKK in a barn in rural America by Peter van Agtmael.[24]

The speech by Adolf Hitler that West sampled in "Heil Hitler"

On April 21, West announced that he was changing the title of the album to Cuck (in popular culture, short for cuckold), which he said represented "[his] whole style".[25] He released the music video for the second single called "Cousins" the same day in a tweet, with part of the text reading "This song is called COUSINS about my cousin that's locked in jail for life for killing a pregnant lady a few years after I told him we wouldn't 'look at dirty magazines together' anymore."[26] The track contains lyrics discussing West's experience having an incestuous relationship with a male cousin as a child and his recreational use of nitrous oxide.[10] The music video consists of low quality footage drawn from home media, TV commercials, and pornography.[27]

On May 7, West stated on Twitter that he was uploading the third single called "Heil Hitler". On May 8, he released the music video for the single, featuring people draped in animal skins singing the chorus and a sample from a speech by Adolf Hitler.[28][29] West would subsequently release the song on SoundCloud and Scrybe. West then stated on May 9 that the song was "banned by all digital streaming platforms".[30][31] An instrumental version titled "The Heil Symphony" was uploaded in its place on May 14.[32][33]

Leak

[edit]
An iTunes screenshot of the album's leak, including the metadata

On May 18, 2025, the album was leaked in its entirety after a $999[34] charity group buy for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum via the messaging site Discord. The leaked album files contained derogatory messaging towards West in its media and metadata as a form of protest, including listing Blunts as the song artist instead of West, listing "AI" and "1945" as its genre and date respectively, and replacing the cover with a 1994 picture of West wearing an antifascist shirt with the title "Fuck Nazis" and a subtitle—"50 year old loser promoting fascism and hate speech"—overlaid onto it.[35]

West acknowledged the leak on Twitter, clarifying that the song "Uncle" was no longer part of the album, and its lyrics were not related to his wife Censori.[36][37] He would also state the following regarding its leak:

"Somebody got a drive and threw it on YouTube and said this is CUCK

What I love about getting blocked on DSPs and having songs leaked and shows cancelled is...

It proves everything I'm saying and why I'm saying"[38][35]

May–July: Post-antisemitism

[edit]

On May 20, "WW3" was removed from all streaming services, followed by West tweeting that he was "done with antisemitism" following a FaceTime call with his children on May 22. He asked God to "forgive me for the pain I've caused" and said that he forgave those who caused him pain.[39] He later re-uploaded the song, with new black cover art and censoring of the words "Nazi", "Swastikas", "Hitler", "Antisemitic" and "Mein Kampf".[40] "The Heil Symphony" was also taken down, then re-uploaded with black cover art and the updated name "Hit Symphony".[41][42] On May 31, a song titled "Hallelujah" was uploaded to YouTube before being added to streaming services. The song itself, which is an edited version of "Heil Hitler", censored the phrase "Heil Hitler" and replaced it with "Hallelujah", with "all my niggas Nazi's" being changed to "all my niggas got me". The only other censored word is "Nazi" during the line "So I became a Nazi yeah, bitch I'm the villain".

On June 22, West posted to X that he was thinking about changing the album's name from "CUKKK" to "IN A PERFECT WORLD", implying that "CUKKK" was another title for the album.[5][1] He later posted "IN A PERFECT WORLD", implying it as the new title for the album.[6] Blunts would also update the caption of an image of him and West on Instagram, changing it from "CUCKS" to "IN A PERFECT WORLD" to reflect the name change.[43]

The song "Diddy Free" would be reworked and released on Never Stop (2025), a collaborative album between West and Sean Combs' son, Christian "King" Combs.[44]

West would later play "Gas Chambers", also known as "All the Love", in a rehearsal a day prior to his concert in Shanghai on July 11, but he did not play the song during the concert.[45] Other album tracks, like "WW3" and "Hallelujah", were played at the concert on July 12 without West's approval or knowledge according to a post made by his team on Xiaohonshu[46], along with songs from his upcoming album Bully and his song with YoungBoy Never Broke Again, "Alive" (2025).[47]

Track listing

[edit]

All songs are reportedly written by Dave Blunts.[10] The following refers to the May 18, 2025 leak;[48] it is unclear if this will be the final track listing for the album.

Cuck track listing
No.TitleProducer(s)Length
1."WW3"
  • Ye
  • Quadwoofer
  • Sheffmade
  • Templecitygrounds
1:45
2."Cosby" 2:30
3."Diddy Free" 2:58
4."Dirty Magazines" 1:27
5."Jesus" 1:24
6."Bianca" 1:56
7."Cousins"
2:32
8."Virgil" 2:04
9."Uncle" 1:37
10."Free My Kids" 1:50
11."Heil Hitler"
  • Quadwoofer
  • Sheffmade
1:37
12."Gas Chambers" 1:55
13."Hitler Ye Jesus" 2:06
14."Jared" 2:54
15."Nitrous" 1:37
Total length:30:11

Notes

  • All track names are stylized in uppercase.
  • "Heil Hitler" has been changed to "Hallelujah".
  • West has said on X that "Uncle" was no longer a part of the album.[8]

Sample credits

  • "WW3" contains a sample of "I Get High (On Your Memory)" by Freda Payne.
  • "Cosby" contains a sample of "Run the Track" by Jamtech Foundation.
  • "Bianca" contains a sample of "You're an Angel" by The Essence of Life.
  • "Heil Hitler" contains a sample of a 1935 speech by Adolf Hitler.[29]
  • "Jared" contains a sample of an Instagram live by Justin Bieber.[49]
  • "Nitrous" contains a sample of "100% of Disin' You" by Armando.

Credits and personnel

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b Nevares, Gabriel Bras (June 22, 2025). "Kanye West Hopes To "Manifest Love" By Changing His Album's Controversial Title". HotNewHipHop. Archived from the original on June 23, 2025. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
  2. ^ Strauss, Matthew (February 7, 2025). "Kanye West, Amid Return to Public Eye, Praises Hitler, Diddy, and Chris Brown in Hate-Filled X Rant". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on April 17, 2025. Retrieved June 21, 2025.
  3. ^ a b Dope As Usual Podcast (June 17, 2025). Dave Blunts Weight Loss Journey, Putting Down The Cup & much more! | DOPE AS USUAL Podcast. Archived from the original on June 18, 2025. Retrieved June 19, 2025 – via YouTube.
  4. ^ Paul, Bryson "Boom" (June 14, 2025). "Dave Blunts Previews 50 Cent Diss Track After The Mogul Trolled Kanye West". HotNewHipHop. Retrieved June 21, 2025.
  5. ^ a b @kanyewest (June 22, 2025). "I may change the album name from CUKKK to IN A PERFECT WORLD Manifest love" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  6. ^ a b West, Kanye (June 22, 2025). "IN A PERFECT WORLD". Twitter. Archived from the original on June 26, 2025.
  7. ^ Horvath, Zachary (April 15, 2025). "Kanye West Claims He & Dave Blunts Are 'Almost Finished' With 'WW3' Album". HotNewHipHop. Retrieved April 19, 2025.
  8. ^ a b Brown, Preezy (April 24, 2025). "Ye Confirms This Rising Rap Star Ghostwrote His New 'Cuck' Album". VIBE.com. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  9. ^ Rajagopal, Mekala (May 9, 2025). "The First Rule of Touring With Dave Blunts? No Shitting On the Bus". Interview Magazine. Archived from the original on May 11, 2025. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  10. ^ a b c Blake, Cole (April 22, 2025). "Kanye West Reveals Dave Blunts Wrote The Entirety Of His New Album, "Cuck"". HotNewHipHop. Archived from the original on April 24, 2025. Retrieved April 22, 2025.
  11. ^ Saponara, Michael (March 6, 2025). "After Years of Antisemitic Rhetoric, Ye Now Declares 'My New Sound Called Antisemitic'". Billboard. Archived from the original on March 11, 2025. Retrieved March 7, 2025.
  12. ^ Winslow, Mike (March 7, 2025). "Ye Says His New Album Has "Antisemitic Sound"". AllHipHop. Retrieved March 7, 2025.
  13. ^ Nevares, Gabriel Bras (March 6, 2025). "Kanye West Declares New Album "Bully" Has That "Antisemitic Sound"". HotNewHipHop. Archived from the original on March 18, 2025. Retrieved March 7, 2025.
  14. ^ Nevares, Gabriel Bras (March 16, 2025). "Kanye West Unveils Nazi-Inspired Logos For New Album "Bully" Cover Art & Sunday Service". HotNewHipHop. Archived from the original on March 19, 2025. Retrieved March 16, 2025.
  15. ^ Qadir, Tabasum (March 25, 2025). "What Is Ye's 'World War 3' All About? Why Are Fans Going Utterly Bonkers Over It?". Netflix Junkie. Archived from the original on May 24, 2025. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
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  17. ^ Blake, Cole (April 13, 2025). "Kanye West Shows Love To Kodak Black & Adin Ross For Praising His "WW3" Single". HotNewHipHop. Archived from the original on May 11, 2025. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  18. ^ Bennett, Jessica (April 3, 2025). Ye Leans Into Controversy With Potential Tracklist For New Album 'WW3' (Report). Vibe Magazine. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  19. ^ Saponera, Michael (March 31, 2025). 8 Things We Learned From Ye's Interview With DJ Akademiks (Report). Billboard. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  20. ^ Cowen, Trace (April 1, 2025). Ye's "WW3" Video Features Repurposed 'Roots' Scene, Depicts Woman Being Whipped (Report). Complex. Archived from the original on May 22, 2025. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  21. ^ Blake, Cole (April 3, 2025). Kanye West Is Supposedly Dropping A New "WW3" Album Today (Report). HotNewHipHop. Archived from the original on April 3, 2025. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  22. ^ Dolak, Kevin (April 3, 2025). Kanye West Raps About Split With Wife Bianca Censori on His New Album, 'WW3' (Report). The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  23. ^ Fisher, Caroline (April 3, 2025). Kanye West Unveils KKK-Inspired Cover For Upcoming Album "WW3" (Report). HotNewHipHop. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  24. ^ Cassady, Daniel (May 2, 2025). "Magnum Photographer Says Kanye West's Use of KKK Image on 'Cuck' Album Cover Was 'Unauthorized'". ARTnews. Retrieved May 3, 2025.
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  26. ^ "Ye continues to sound off after alleging sex acts with a male cousin. But this time it's about his kids". Los Angeles Times. April 22, 2025. Archived from the original on April 25, 2025. Retrieved April 25, 2025.
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  29. ^ a b Sadler, Armon (May 8, 2025). "Ye Shares Militant Music Video For "Heil Hitler"". VIBE Magazine. Archived from the original on May 8, 2025. Retrieved May 8, 2025.
  30. ^ Saponara, Michael (May 8, 2025). "Ye Claims His 'Hitler' Single Is Banned From 'All Digital Streaming Platforms'". Billboard. Retrieved May 8, 2025.
  31. ^ Lapin, Andrew. "Self-described Nazi rapper Kanye West releases new song titled 'Heil Hitler'". Times of Israel. Archived from the original on May 9, 2025. Retrieved May 9, 2025.
  32. ^ Ye - Topic (May 14, 2025). THE HEIL SYMPHONY. Retrieved May 15, 2025 – via YouTube.
  33. ^ "THE HEIL SYMPHONY". Spotify. May 14, 2025. Archived from the original on May 15, 2025. Retrieved May 15, 2025.
  34. ^ King, Ashley (May 20, 2025). "Entire Kanye West Album Leaked in Discord, With Callouts". Digital Music News. Retrieved May 20, 2025.
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  36. ^ West, Kanye (May 19, 2025). "UNCLE is not on CUCK and is not about my wife". X (formely Twitter). Archived from the original on May 19, 2025.
  37. ^ Art, Pop Culture & (May 19, 2025). "Kanye West reacts to CUCK album leak, denies track UNCLE is about wife Bianca Censori". The Express Tribune. Archived from the original on May 19, 2025. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  38. ^ West, Kanye (May 19, 2025). "Somebody got a drive and threw it on YouTube and said this is CUCK What I love about getting blocked on DSPs and having songs leaked and shows cancelled is... It proves everything I'm saying and why I'm saying". Twitter. Archived from the original on May 19, 2025. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  39. ^ Saponara, Michael (May 22, 2025). "Ye Claims He's 'Done With Antisemitism': 'Forgive Me for the Pain I've Caused'". Billboard. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
  40. ^ West, Kanye (May 22, 2025). "WW3". Spotify.
  41. ^ McGovern Jones, Kellen (May 21, 2025). "Ye's Wordless "Heil Hitler" Track Still Too Loud For Spotify's Ears". Dallas Express. Archived from the original on May 23, 2025. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
  42. ^ "HIT SYMPHONY". Spotify. May 21, 2025. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
  43. ^ Blessing, Davion. "IN A PERFECT WORLD". Instagram. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
  44. ^ King Combs - NEVER STOP, June 27, 2025, retrieved June 27, 2025
  45. ^ yeunrlsd on X: https://x.com/yeunrlsd/status/1943682662771613932
  46. ^ https://x.com/yeunrlsd/status/1944699126655901905
  47. ^ Gupta, Shatakshi (July 12, 2025). "How many songs did Kanye West performed at 'Ye live in Shanghai' concert? Complete setlist explored". www.soapcentral.com. Retrieved July 14, 2025.
  48. ^ Paul, Bryson "Boom" (May 18, 2025). "An Entire Kanye West Album Just Leaked". HotNewHipHop. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  49. ^ freetrash. "Ye breaks down how he sampled Justin Bieber's Instagram freestyle into a song". TikTok.
  50. ^ a b c "Instagram".
  51. ^ a b c @chukibeatz; (April 25, 2025). ""COUSINS" by Ye produced by Ye, DN & me written by Dave 🫨". Retrieved May 11, 2025 – via Instagram.
  52. ^ Saponara, Michael (April 3, 2025). "Ye Confirms Bianca Censori Split in New Song: 'My Baby She Ran Away'". Billboard. Retrieved May 15, 2025.
  53. ^ a b @kanyewest (May 20, 2025). "SHEFF AND QUAD MADE THE OG HEIL HITLER BEAT" (Tweet). Retrieved May 20, 2025 – via Twitter.
  54. ^ "Instagram".
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Video by Chuki Beats about "Cousins"

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