Ye ran a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on Monday (Jan. 26) to apologize for years of antisemitic and other inflammatory remarks. The open letter, titled “To Those I’ve Hurt” and paid for by Yeezy, comes as he prepares to release his album Bully, Pitchfork reported.
In it, Ye says a 2002 car accident caused an injury to the right frontal lobe of his brain that wasn’t properly diagnosed until 2023, and that it led to a diagnosis of bipolar type 1. Pitchfork noted that he acknowledges doctors have given conflicting diagnoses. He also describes a four-month manic episode in early 2025 that, in his words, “destroyed my life.”
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He addresses the worst of what he did directly. “In that fractured state, I gravitated toward the most destructive symbol I could find, the swastika, and even sold T-shirts bearing it,” he wrote, per Billboard. Then: “It does not excuse what I did, though. I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people.” He also apologized to the Black community, writing, “I am so sorry to have let you down. I love us.”
The Anti-Defamation League responded within hours. “Ye’s apology to the Jewish people is long overdue,” a spokesperson told Billboard, but the letter “doesn’t automatically undo his long history of antisemitism,” including a 2025 song and what the group called hundreds of tweets and swastikas. “The truest apology would be for him to not engage in antisemitic behavior in the future,” the statement continued. “We wish him well on the road to recovery.”
The truest apology would be for him to not engage in antisemitic behavior in the future.
Anti-Defamation League spokesperson, Billboard
The ADL has been skeptical before. After Ye posted in May 2025 that he was “done with antisemitism,” it told Billboard: “Sorry, but we’re not buying it.” He has taken other steps since then, including a November video apologizing to a rabbi, Billboard noted. Pitchfork added that the letter does not address the sexual-misconduct allegations in lawsuits filed against him in late 2024.
A day after the ad ran, Ye told Vanity Fair, as quoted by Rolling Stone, that the apology had nothing to do with “reviving my commerciality.” “I owe a huge apology once again for everything that I said that hurt the Jewish and Black communities in particular,” he said. “All of it went too far.”
The fallout from his past conduct is the backdrop: Pitchfork recounted that Adidas and Gap dropped their Yeezy partnerships in 2022. Later chapters of the Bully saga include his handwritten tracklist in March and the Wireless Festival cancellation after the U.K. barred him.
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