Ye has released ‘Bully’, his twelfth studio album and first solo project in four years, and one track is generating more conversation than any other. ‘All the Love’, the album’s seventh track, is built around a sample of ‘Fayek Alaya’, a 1963 recording by Lebanese icon Fairuz that has held near-sacred status in Arab cultural memory for over six decades.
The original piece was written by the Rahbani Brothers, Assi and Mansour, and forms part of their celebrated theatrical musical ‘El Leil We El Kandeel’. Its title loosely translates as ‘you are awake over me’. On Ye’s track, producer André Troutman works Fairuz’s vocal phrase through a talkbox, set against a drum-driven production layered with synths.
The question of clearance has not been lost on Arab audiences. The precedent is well established. In 1992, Madonna incorporated one of Fairuz’s recordings into her album ‘Erotica’ without clearance, was subsequently sued, and eventually paid $2.5 million in settlement. For ‘All the Love’, the official songwriting credits list Assi Rahbani, Mansour Rahbani, and Fairuz alongside Ye and his co-writers, strongly suggesting the sample was formally cleared.
Ye is not the first to reach for her catalogue. Drake previewed a sample of Fairuz’s ‘Wahdon’ on a teaser for his forthcoming album ‘Iceman’ in 2025, a song rooted in wartime grief written by poet Talal Haidar. That instance generated its own debate, with clearance unconfirmed at the time. Fairuz is not simply a celebrated singer. Born in Beirut in 1935, her voice has come to represent collective memory and national identity across generations of Arab listeners, which is why every use of her work carries a conversation with it.
‘Bully’ was released on 28 March via Ye’s YZY label and independent distributor Gamma. The album had a prolonged and turbulent path to release, first announced in September 2024 before being delayed repeatedly and briefly circulated online in unfinished form. It is Ye’s first solo project since ‘Donda 2’ in 2022, and he is scheduled to embark on a world tour from April to August 2026 in support of it.
