Kanye West, 48, has reportedly gone through a second official name change and now wants to be known as Ye Ye.
The Grammy Award-winning rapper legally ditched his birth name, Kanye Omari West, to be known only as Ye in 2021. According to Page Six, business documents filed in California by his chief financial officer, Hussain Lalani, displayed a different alias.
Kanye West reportedly changed his legal name for a second time from Ye to Ye Ye. (Photo by Gotham/GC Images)
Apparently, paperwork for the Chicago native’s Yeezy apparel, Yeezy record label, and Getting Out Our Dreams brand list Ye Ye under “manager or member name.”
Years before his first name change, the father of four released an album titled “Ye” in June 2018. The Def Jam-backed project’s infamous cover art featured text that read, “I hate being bi-polar its [sic] awesome.”
West addressed naming his eighth solo studio LP after his longtime nickname while speaking with Los Angeles-based radio personality Kurt “Big Boy” Alexander.
“I believe ‘ye’ is the most commonly used word in the Bible, and in the Bible it means ‘you.’ So I’m you, I’m us, it’s us,’ West explained. “It went from Kanye, which means the only one, to just Ye, just being a reflection of our good, our bad, our confused, everything. It’s more of a reflection of who we are.”
Yeezy’s chief of staff, Milo Yiannopoulos, penned an open letter in February 2024 where he called on streaming platforms, publishers, stores, unions, lyrics websites, and data resellers to refer to the hip-hop superstar as Ye.
“Ye is one of the most recognizable people in the world, on par with presidents and popes. He didn’t take the decision to change his name, potentially sacrificing some of the immense value captured by the brand of ‘Kanye West,’ lightly,” Yiannopoulos wrote.
The far-right political commentator added, “He has on several occasions referred to it as his slave name. Ye is a Black man in America who wants the right to full self-determination just like everyone else.”
While it appears West has embraced another moniker, many onlookers dismissed this latest renaming by the Sunday Service Choir leader. Page Six readers shared their opinions on the man now known as Ye Ye.
One person commented, “Name change doesn’t change his character or his soul.” Another Kanye critic stated, “He chose ‘Ye Ye’ upon learning that his first choice, Has-Been, was already taken.”
“Instead of Ye Ye, we should be calling him Cray Cray,” joked one commenter.
Ironically, West helped popularize the slang word “cray” as an abbreviation for “crazy” with his “Ni**as in Paris” collaboration with Jay-Z in 2011.
Ima finally stop using the @kanyewest twitter cause my name is Ye
“Next it will be ‘The Artist Formally Known as YE,’ lol. He is so desperate for attention,” another commenter suggested, referring to the late musician Prince adopting an unpronounceable symbol as his stage name in 1993.
Additionally, a commenter posted, “I would think he’d be calling himself Adolf by now.” West has faced significant backlash for repeatedly using anti-Semitic rhetoric and openly praising Nazi Germany dictator Adolf Hitler.
In May 2025, Ye Ye claimed he would no longer purposely antagonize the Jewish community, asking for forgiveness.
“God, forgive me for the pain I’ve caused,” he wrote in May in a series of posts on X. Another post included him writing, “I forgive those who have caused me pain.”
Those messages were posted by the @kanyewest account on X. However, “The College Dropout” artist recently hinted at shifting to a new handle on the app formerly known as Twitter.
“Ima finally stop using the @kanyewest Twitter cause my name is Ye. Gonna start a Ye account and it is what it is,” the “All Falls Down” hitmaker tweeted on June 1.
His verified Instagram page already has the @ye username. Ye Ye has presently removed all the posts from Instagram except for two that he shared on May 23 and May 25, respectively. Both posts seem to be part of the promo for a project called “Season 10.”
As of this writing, West has yet to make a public statement about the business documents listing his name as Ye Ye. Meanwhile, he released several versions of a polarizing album titled “Bully” in March 2025.
