After such an insane series of career highs and lows, Kanye West’s personal and professional life has been turned upside down several times over. The question on many peoples’ minds is this: can consistently great new music dig him out of the hole he’s made for himself?
[To just read the album review, skip to “Vultures 1 Review”]
A Brief Recap of Ye’s Fall Off
Kanye West is obviously no stranger to controversial, bold statements. He has a long history of being outspoken on issues like disaster relief for poor communities during Hurricane Katrina, Donald Trump’s presidential run, and abortion. With each new statement, the sentiment became more questionable and the backtracking became more of a factor. For example in 2018, he went on his infamous “Slavery Was A Choice” rant, only to master sensei parry the claim to mean that black people put themselves in “mental slavery” or get “boxed in”. It’s kind of a cowardly way to go about grabbing headlines and getting people to hear his scatterbrained, half-thought out opinions, but it works to help him promote himself and his brand.
Around the time that he did his Yeezy fashion show in Paris in 2021, releasing the “White Lives Matter” shirt you see above, he really started to lose his grip on the clickbait strategy. “Black Lives Matter” is a statement many of you are likely familiar with, as it was used as the rallying cry for unjustly killed unarmed black people like Tamir Rice, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery. While the organization behind the slogan has a questionable public standing, the message is good. “White Lives Matter” was a reactionary counter to erase and minimize the struggle of black people. Most of the organization pushing that message has been associated with white supremacists. To make matters worse for Kanye, he was wearing the shirt alongside Daily Wire pundit Candice Owens, who has a littered history of racially charged opinions. She even released a documentary about how George Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose, not suffocation, that Kanye, Kid Rock and for some reason Ray J were at?
I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here, but essentially the backlash from the White Lives Matter shirt was pretty strong. Kanye’s back pedal of “white people wore Black Lives Matter shirts so why can’t I tell them they matter with this shirt” didn’t convince me or really anyone else. Shortly after this is when he began his antisemitism arc, strap in.
This was the very first mention of “Jewish people” from Kanye that would start an unfortunate trend. Shortly after this, came the infamous “Def Con” tweet:
This really started the spiral.
If you weren’t paying attention to his career just a year before, this insane downward trajectory might not have been as shocking. He went from being worth upward of $2 billion, selling out packed shows at football stadiums and being booked to headline Coachella to losing hard. He lost a staggering $1.6 billion from his net worth, got dropped by Adidas leaving his Yeezy clothing empire in shambles, had four stadium shows cancelled, and was banned from Twitter. With the help of Candice Owens, he went from one of hottest artists walking the planet to persona non grata very quickly. Then, of course, came this:
And this:
And then finally this:
The Alex Jones interview and its aftermath was perhaps the most disgraceful and disastrous bit of PR in the history of American pop culture. I truly cannot think of a more damaging media tour than him going on Drink Champs to deny George Floyd’s killing, then going on Lex Fridman’s show to deny the Holocaust then going on Info Wars to give Hitler direct praise. If someone else can think of a worse series of sound bites for an artist in the last 50 years then I will gladly look into it. Maybe this?
Or this?
Anyway, after these disasters, the pool of people and companies that would work with him began to shrink to almost nothing.
The Comeback
[I’ll spare you the details of the constant delays and strange rollout for this new series of albums that Kanye and Ty Dolla Sign are beginning to roll out. Check here for that.]
7 minutes.
It took only 7 minutes to sell out United Center in Chicago, which holds roughly 23,500 people. When I went to see him in Atlanta, I’m certain that it took 10 minutes. The point being that the demand for Kanye West to come back into the spotlight to perform and drop new music is still insanely high. Despite his terrible speech and subsequent non-apologies, and even doubling down of said terrible speech, his fan base is unwavering in their die hard support. The general public’s image of Kanye has been permanently tarnished, but does that truly matter?
We are living in a fragmented, niche polyculture where artists, comedians, and other entertainers no longer need to be on the radio or on late night talk shows to reach a wider audience. The post-cancellation success of people like Shane Gillis and Louis CK prove this. Comedians like Kevin Hart continue to feed their audiences by going on day time TV and starring in blockbusters, which comes with censorship. When you have 23,500 people ready to come see you perform and all of them have credit cards to get themselves there, the only issue becomes will the stadium let you do your show. And in many cases, money talks. Despite Kanye West’s absurd and gross statements, he is once again being given a chance to supply the demand that he drives. With the money and attention, comes the re-endorsement. Kid Cudi is back on his side, Donald Glover just recently called him the best rapper alive, and the huge mainstream feature list of this record is an endorsement in itself. Carti, Travis Scott, Lil Durk, Charlie Wilson, Chris Brown (ew), they’re all here to give him the thumbs again yet again.
Can he ever truly “come back” or “fall off” when there’s always a safety net of hype beast dick riders underneath him to do his back pedaling for him? I’m really not sure, but what I am sure of his that his new album with Ty Dolla Sign is pretty good.
Vultures 1 Review
First and foremost, I love this album cover. Recently, Kanye has been engaging in a weird public hotwifing kink with his 29-year-old spouse Bianca Censori, where he’s been parading her around in no clothing for the entire world to thirst over her. I don’t endorse this bizarre, definitely misogynistic behavior. But if you know Kanye, he knows how to turn the depraved into an art installation, case in point:
Call her his muse, call it “artistic expression”, it already has a definition. I think the cover is fire and an honest view of where his mind is at currently.
While Vultures 1 doesn't come close to his old and new classics like Graduation, Yeezus or even The Life of Pablo, it’s probably his best record since 2016. Its neck and neck with his DONDA record, only edging it out slightly because it doesn’t have any weird bleeps and silent parts to censor it. He’s no longer pretending to be a Christian and suppressing his deepest desires, he’s fully back to cursing, being horny and hitting us with absurd bars about R. Kelly, Columbine and giving backshots. Primal Ye is back in rare form here, and with some great assists from Ty Dolla $ign, who I think is the current male R&B G.O.A.T.
I really think the production here is tasteful and complex, really putting the sometimes awkward and formulaic production of DONDA to shame. From top to bottom, it’s varied, hard hitting and caters well to the ever-changing vibes. The bars about making it out of early obscurity on “KEYS TO MY LIFE” rings more powerful then ever with this warbling, strangely reversed beat and some really nice female backing vocals. “PAID” has this nice synth heavy dance production with a repetitive but effective chorus from Ty that reminds me of their previous link on “Fade”. “BACK TO ME” swirls ghostly vocal samples, 16-bar high hat hits and another killer chorus from Ty Dolla Sign to set the stage for Kanye and Freddie Gibbs to spazz about past flings and “beautiful big tittied butt naked women". “HOODRAT” utilizes this nearly annoying but ultimately pretty sick vocal sample to guide an ironic gospel cut, “I know I got a niiiice whip, but I hope me and you can be on one Accord”. “BURN” takes us back to soul sampling old Ye, with some of his most impactful bars in many years. We also get strong as fuck posse cuts like “FUK SUMN” with Carti and Travis, plus the already released but Hellish title track “VULTURES”.
There are some duds here for sure, “CARNIVAL” is actually quite terrible. On “CARNIVAL” the lines where Kanye is comparing himself to Bill Cosby and R. Kelly are TRASH. Plus the Carti feature is super underwhelming. Considering that some of the record was finished at the stadium it premiered at, some of the record definitely sounds half-finished. It’s not quite as bad as it was on DONDA 2, for instance, but this album is at its worst when Kanye is a spectator and not a really active participant.
Some of you may also be concerned about the Burzum influence or antisemitic bars at play. The sound of Burzum plays literally no role here whatsoever. No samples, no black metal vibes, nothing at all. Not even the cover is a copy and paste of a Burzum cover. This is a double-edged sword for me personally. I’m glad that Varg doesn’t have his murderous, white supremacist hands in the DNA of this record. Yet, drawing from black metal, maybe not Burzum specifically, could’ve been interesting and the visual reference with no implantation leads to an empty aesthetic in that department. As far as anti-Jewish bars here, they don’t really exist, aside from the last track “KING”. Here, he does a sort of victory lap on hate titles thrown at him. “Crazy, bipolar, antisemite but I’m still the king”. To me, it’s a pretty uninspired chorus, plus he’s called himself all three of these things, so I’m not sure why the media doing it is a problem. Definitely a low point.
EDIT: I don't have the specific tracks but one song mentions “Jewish lawyers” and “Vultures” has the line “I’m not antisemitic, I just f*** a Jewish b****”. Also pretty distasteful and didn’t have be there. Mild in comparison to what could’ve been on this record, but I digress.
My detractions from this album are generally the overuse of features, the lack of lyrical substance, and certain songs that drag on for too long. The aforementioned title track has a cool vibe, but Ty goes on and on and on and never shuts the fuck up. He does the same on “TALKING”, the cute North West feature track. I would’ve been good with just her and James Blake taking the track for a minute and then it going to the next song. Instead, we get some bloat.
Overall, this is a great stride in the right direction. This is a focused, coherent and fun project between two dudes that are clearly locked into a vision. I look forward to parts 2 and 3, and I hope maybe Kanye stops with the public statements outside of albums. To answer the question posed in the beginning, no amount of good music is going to repair his sins or his reputation. He doesn’t have to issue an apology, no one is forcing him, he’s a grown man. But if he continues to be like Dave Chappele is with the trans community, dragging the Jewish community into his art, it’s going to follow him around like a specter, always ruining the witty bars on display and solid production. I really would like to see him actually say sorry and stop living this burnt out, on the run, weird, NDA laden life he’s living. It makes me genuinely sad to see his brain rot to this level. But unlike Fantano or whatever other publication you go check out, I’ll admit the album does have some genuine artistic merit to it.