ye is Kanye West’s eighth solo studio album. The album discusses topics in Kanye’s life, including mental health, family, and addiction. He also explicitly announces his diagnosis with bipolar disorder through the album’s artwork and a proclamation within the album.

The seven-song project was premiered on June 1, 2018, at an exclusive listening party hosted in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where the album was primarily created. This listening party was also live-streamed on WAV Media. At the listening party, comedian Chris Rock announced that the album was simply titled ye, although the title had initially been teased as LOVE EVERYONE. Unbeknownst to fans, Kim Kardashian, Kanye’s wife, had teased the title hours prior to the announcement.

In an interview with Big Boy conducted during the Wyoming festivities, Kanye explained his decision to name the album ye:

I believe ‘ye’ is the most commonly used word in the Bible, and, in the Bible, it means ‘you,’ so it’s [saying] “I’m you, I’m us, it’s us.” It went from being Kanye, which means the only one, to just ye – just being a reflection of our good, our bad, our confused, everything, that I’m just more of a reflection of who we are, just as beings.

Kanye also revealed in this interview that after his infamous TMZ interview (in which he stated that he believes slavery was a choice), he completely re-did his album with an entirely new theme. The fate of the original songs is currently unknown.

ye is the second album in a five-album series of releases that are entirely produced by Kanye. It was preceded by Pusha-T’s DAYTONA, and succeeded by KIDS SEE GHOSTS (his collaborative album with Kid Cudi), Nas‘ NASIR, and Teyana Taylor’s K.T.S.E.

The existence of the album was initially made public on April 19, 2018, when Kanye tweeted the expected release date.

On May 15, 2018, Kanye tweeted a video displaying the working tracklists for his upcoming projects, his labeled “Ye.” At the time the video was shot, only two songs had been added to Ye’s album: “Wouldn’t Leave” and “Extacy” (which was later retitled “XTCY” and released on August 11, 2018). The video also displayed “Ghost Town” as a track on Ye and Kid Cudi’s collaborative album KIDS SEE GHOSTS, but it now appears as track 6 on ye.

On June 10, 2018, ye became Kanye’s 8th consecutive No. 1 album on the Billboard 200.

“Ye vs. the People” was premiered on Power 106 on April 27th, 2018. The song consists of one long back-and-forth verse, featuring T.I., who plays the role of “The People.” The track was most likely inspired by T.I.’s “T.I. vs. T.I.P.,” which, like “Ye vs. The People,” consisted of a single verse, alternating between the two characters.

The song premiered just hours after the release of “Lift Yourself,” a troll-ish song that Ye released to “bring closure” to HOT 97’s Ebro Darden, following their on-air phone call and text conversation regarding Ye’s support for Donald Trump and other right-wing pundits.

The title may have been inspired by the FX show, “American Crime Story: The People Vs. O.J. Simpson. Kanye has repeatedly referred to the infamous case on songs such as “On Sight,” “Stronger” and ScHoolboy Q’s “THat Part.” In addition, in 2016 Ye was spotted wearing a “Free O.J.” shirt. It should also be noted that Kanye’s wife, Kim Kardashian, is the daughter of Robert Kardashian, who was one of O.J.’s defense attorneys in the case.