Producers usually fight for credit. James Blake asked for his to be erased. After Ye’s long-delayed Bully landed on streaming services over the weekend, Blake said on his direct-to-fan platform Vault that he wanted his name off the producer credits for the closing track, “This One Here.”
Blake explained that the released version keeps some of his original construction and vocal pitching, but that “the spirit” of his production “is mostly absent,” Pitchfork reported. Spotify lists Blake, Ye, Quentin Miller and Don Toliver as writers on the song, per Complex.
My original version is a completely different production in spirit. 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.
James Blake, Pitchfork, quoting Vault
He added, “It’s not personal!” and explained: “I just hit a point where don’t want to be credited on music where I can’t affect the end result.”
The history
Blake and Ye have worked together before. Pitchfork notes they collaborated on an LP in 2015, and HotNewHipHop says Blake has official credits on “TALKING,” a Ye song with Ty Dolla $ign, and that fans once expected a joint project called War from their studio sessions. For fans, the interesting question is what Blake’s original version of “This One Here” sounds like. HotNewHipHop wonders whether it will ever be released.
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Bully, out via YZY and the independent label Gamma, is Ye’s first LP since 2024. Its guests include Nine Vicious, Travis Scott, CeeLo Green, André Troutman, Peso Pluma, Don Toliver and Ty Dolla $ign, Pitchfork lists. The weekend’s rollout included four listening parties and a YouTube livestream before the album reached services.
Blake’s own record
Blake released his seventh solo album, Trying Times, earlier this month on his own label, Good Boy Records, listing his longtime partner, actress Jameela Jamil, as an executive producer. “For everyone here—without jameela this album would not be patch on what it is now, in its final form,” he wrote, according to Complex. Describing the independent route, he said, “I left the ‘safety net’ of a system that was strangling my creativity.”
Complex’s coverage calls Trying Times his “favorite record” he has ever made, which gives his decision about Bully an added edge: he is publicly choosing control over credit.
Trying TimesJames BlakeListen on Apple Music
Blake’s later work with the stars was still to come: in July, he and Travis Scott wrote the end-credits song for The Odyssey.
- Track
- “This One Here,” the closing track on *Bully*
- Request
- Removal from the producer credits, “for now”
- Writers per Spotify
- Blake, Ye, Quentin Miller, Don Toliver
- Blake’s album
- *Trying Times*, via Good Boy Records
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
