Kanye West Needs To Retire

A once-great artist has fallen off in every regard

It is with a very heavy heart that I must concur with all of Twitter and probably 95% of you, and finally admit, my GOAT is washed. 

There have been many false alarms when it comes to his career. I took part in hating on 808s & Heartbreak before seeing Drake’s career spring off of that sound. I watched live as he interrupted Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs, right before he got called a “jackass” by then-president Barack Obama, before going onto release maybe his greatest album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I hated, then grew to love Yeezus. I watched him bankrupt himself with his fashion pursuits before becoming a billionaire from it. I saw him get divorced, then turn his pain into gold on DONDA. I reported as he lost a lot of his fortune by being an antisemitic moron before going independent and getting his first number one record in years. The ebbs and flows, failures and redemptions, is the core of what makes Kanye West such an interesting pop culture figure to follow. 

His current era, and namely his new album Vultures 2, is the absolute end of the line. This is an abyss from which there is no escape. This is the worst album of the year by any artist in any genre. 

Kanye has been releasing music for 20 years now, so it’s really not a surprise that he’s run out of compelling things to rap about. He’s seen massive success and prevailed through great adversity, and has been able to spin compelling lyrics out of it. I don’t know if it’s just the really weird, hedonistic pseudo-marriage he’s in or the influence of horny frat R&B artist Ty Dolla $ign, but the subject matter here is just piss poor. DONDA for as flawed as it was left some room for God, or reminiscing on the good times with his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian. Ye and Ty are terrible influences on each other, and just sound like a more drunk and depraved Drake and PartyNextDoor, respectively. “Reach for the popcorn, oops that’s my cock” Ye says on “TIME MOVING SLOW” and later on “FRIED”, “she giving blowjobs and I applied”. It’s like he developed a specific form of CTE that takes the “rizz” function out of your brain. He hits on women like Antonio Brown does, with harassment. The way he talks about women is similar to the texts leaked in the lawsuit his ex-assistant recently levied against him. 

“Be honest with me, is my dick racist?” - Kanye West

Meanwhile, everytime Ty sings, all I can hear is his XXL Freshman Freestyle, “I like to get my dick sucked while I’m getting high… asked her ‘who’s pussy is this?’ She say Dolla $ign” On each song, we typically find Ty following Ye’s lead flow-wise and lyrically. He’s always fucking someone’s girl, driving an expensive car or traveling the globe, but it’s so goddamn substance-devoid. I really did take the review of this seriously, but the issue is neither of the artists involved did. If this album had any heart, it’s pitch black like a smoker’s lungs after 65 years of chain-ripping Marlboro Reds. 

I could go on for a whole day about the lyrics, but that would be a waste of time because they’re so redundant. Let’s get into the mess that is the production and mixing. Despite not getting the best reviews, DONDA was a career highlight to many fans for reasons no one really thought about. The sound was consistent and organized; the highs were high, the mids were mid and the lows were low, sonically speaking. This album sounds like he gave a bunch of hype sound cloud producers full reign, and each track just sounds blown out. The samples on “FRIED”, “BOMB” and “LIFESTYLE” are way too loud and out of place, and the latter cut is not tracked properly. The result is many songs initially feeling visceral, then slowly turning grating after about 30 seconds of listening. When the production is not punishing my ears, it’s boring me to sleep. “HUSBAND”, “SKY CITY” and “FOREVER” attempt to provide moments of serenity, but are too plainly produced and ring hollow when you think about the artists making the song. It saddens me to say that it is now impossible for Kanye West to write a compelling song. It was only a few years ago that he mesmerized with “Come To Life”, what happened? 

The only real highlights on the album come from some decent features from Young Thug, Future, Lil Baby and Playboi Carti. Even with them pulling the weight, it doesn’t make a difference because it's not any of their respective albums. Does anyone give DJ Khaled credit for getting a decent feature out of Post Malone or Gunna now and again? Absolutely the fuck not. 

No, I refuse to give this man any more credit or attention. He ruined his personal life and reputation with the comments he’s made and the actions he’s done. He burned off any artistic good will he built up from his classic material with the disaster that was Vultures 1. Now, he and his buddy Ty Dolla $ign are just going to run both of their careers into the ground for the sake of, what exactly? They will just continue to “headline” and sell out arenas letting their music play behind them while hiding their faces and saying nothing. They are worse arena acts than fucking Bert Kreischer, and that’s saying a lot. At least he gives his dumb fans what they pay for! Kanye is no longer a great rapper, curator, producer, or even really a crazy figure to watch. He’s fucking washed, and this is the last thing I will ever post about him.