“I Thought About Killing You,” a highlight off the artist formerly known as Kanye West’s 2018 album Ye, serves as the soundtrack to a recent social media update from Bianca Censori.
An artist in her own right, Censori, whose ongoing performance art series is set to continue this year with the launch of new pieces titled CONFESSIONAL (THE WITNESS) and BIANCA IS MY BABY DOLL (THE IDOL), used the song in a post shared to her Instagram Stories in the early hours of Monday (Sept. 21).
While Censori didn’t offer any commentary, the song’s history, and immediate impact, is well-documented. The Ye opener sets the tone for the rest of the Wyoming-recorded seven-tracker, sessions for which came during a particularly prolific summer for Ye and company.
Mere days after releasing the album, Ye offered what many fans viewed as key context to the lyrics of “I Thought About Killing You,” which find him oscillating between ponderings of “premeditated murder” and suicide. While the target of the former isn’t directly specified in the song, one widely held interpretation that immediately took root back in 2018 was that there is no outward target; instead, the song could be viewed as an exploration of the internal back-and-forth one might have while wrestling with their ego.
The month of Ye’s release, Ye asserted in a social media post that he had “killed” his ego.
“Who or what is Kanye West with no ego?” he wondered the time. “Just Ye.”
Asked about “I Thought About Killing You” in a New York Times feature published shortly after the album’s release, Ye conceded that he has “thought about killing myself all the time,” though he argued that allowing such thoughts to play out in full allowed him to avoid actually harming himself.
Notably, the Ye cover art is emblazoned with the playfully contradictory phrase “I hate being bipolar, it’s awesome.” More recently, Ye spoke at length about his struggles with bipolar disorder in a full-page Wall Street Journal ad. In the letter, published in January of this year, he also expressed a desire to “earn” forgiveness, affirming that he was “not a Nazi or an antisemite” and pointing to a lengthy manic episode he says “destroyed” his life in early 2025.
Next, the 24-time Grammy winner will bring his discography-spanning stadium show to Jakarta on Oct. 24. Houston, Dallas, and Phoenix are also set to be visited before year’s end.
