INGLEWOOD, Calif.—Siblings Wendell and Whitney Cole became fans of Kanye West, the artist who now goes by Ye, when they were in middle school. They went to sleep to the sounds of the album “Graduation” and woke up to it before school.
Roughly two decades later, the siblings flew from New York to Los Angeles to attend Ye’s first U.S. stadium show in more than four years, as he attempts a mainstream redemption from past antisemitic and racist statements. Whitney isn’t such a die-hard fan anymore, but bought birthday tickets for her brother, who still connects with the art, if not the artist.
“Listening to his music builds my confidence,” Wendell said.
The Coles represent a range of current and former devotees Ye needs to keep to make his attempted comeback a reality. In January, he took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal to apologize for offensive statements.
Those comments included a social-media post threatening “death con 3” on Jewish people. They resulted in Adidas ending a partnership with the rapper and talent agency CAA dropping him as a client in 2022. Last year, he released a song that glorified Adolf Hitler.
Ye put out his 12th solo album, “Bully,” late last month, which arrived at No. 2 on the Billboard chart. He was kept out of the top spot by the K-Pop group BTS, back with its first studio album since 2020.
He has also scheduled a series of international live shows this year including New Delhi, Istanbul and Madrid. After the rapper was announced as the headliner of a hip-hop festival in London scheduled for July, the city’s mayor and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer were among those who criticized his selection. PepsiCo pulled its sponsorship of the festival on Sunday and other brands have followed suit.
In a statement Monday, Melvin Benn, managing director of Festival Republic, the company behind the London festival, said Ye isn’t being given “a platform to extol opinion of whatever nature.”
He asked that people “reflect on their instant comments of disgust” and “offer some forgiveness and hope to him as I have decided to do,” Benn said.
All this amounts to an attempted rebound that still has a long way to go. While many Ye fans have stuck by him as an artist and continued to stream his hits, his image as a public figure remains tainted and—for some consumers and brands—off-limits.
Ye’s streak of 11 consecutive No. 1 debuts ended in 2024 with “Vultures 2,” a collaboration with Ty Dolla $ign. Several of the star’s previous albums, including “808s & Heartbreak” and “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” remain landmarks.
He is famous for tinkering with music until the last possible minute—sometimes even altering albums online after he puts them out—and the release of “Bully” was anything but straightforward. Ye changed the date of the album multiple times and posted earlier versions of it online last year.
After he published his apology letter, “Bully” was set for March 20. That was also the date BTS planned to put out its comeback, which was widely expected to dominate the charts globally. “Bully” was pushed back another week.
It still came out late: New releases typically appear on streaming services Thursday at midnight, but Ye’s arrived in the early hours of Saturday, so he had fewer days to build up his first-week numbers.
While the biggest stars usually wage massive campaigns when they debut new albums, coordinating with radio conglomerates to blast singles across their airwaves repeatedly on release day, stations didn’t start playing Ye’s song “Father” on a limited basis until several days after it came out, according to data from Mediabase, which tracks airplay.
Even so, “Bully” sold the equivalent of 152,000 albums, according to Billboard, which would have been enough to hit No. 1 in multiple weeks so far this year. His previous two releases, “Vultures 1” and “Vultures 2,” launched with 148,000 and 107,000 units, respectively, showing how a core fandom remained even as brands cut ties.
At SoFi Stadium last week, most of Ye’s set harked back to a time when he was a dominant force in pop culture, with songs including “Runaway,” “All of the Lights” and “Can’t Tell Me Nothing.”
He stood alone on top of a giant dome, far from the crowd, while lights made it appear like a planet was spinning under his feet. At times, the rapper seemed frustrated with the technical aspects of the show.
“Make the earth move slower,” he shouted to the show production at one point, referring to the stage. At other times, he stopped midsong to complain about the lights before restarting.
Ye’s position on top of the dome made him a small figure in the distance from nearly every viewpoint. There was no video offering attendees a closer look.
While he paced around alone for most of the show, he brought rapper Don Toliver out for a few songs—far from the stage, some fans mistakenly thought the guest might be Travis Scott—as well as Ye’s 12-year-old daughter, North West. Friday’s show, the second of two last week, appeared to be sold out with some tickets available for resale. That night, he brought out stars including Scott and Lauryn Hill.
On Wednesday, the crowd was there to see who many believe is one of the greatest artists of a generation. In the past, he has performed with ballet troupes and choirs, or floated just above the heads of the crowd. But who was this Kanye West, singular and so far away, alienated among tens of thousands of fans?
Among the crowd Wednesday was Brian Penrod, a 46-year-old psychotherapist in Los Angeles. A longtime Ye fan, he wore a shirt that said “heal my soul, kill my demon.” He said he chose the shirt because the rapper’s music is often about a “spiritual battle.”
Penrod said people will often claim to support people with mental-health issues “until you act mentally ill,” and he would rather act with compassion toward Ye.
“My favorite painter is Caravaggio,” Penrod added. “He killed a guy. Nobody goes to the museum and says, ‘that guy’s a murderer’…They look at the painting.”
Write to Katherine Sayre at katherine.sayre@wsj.com and Elias Leight at elias.leight@wsj.com