Vultures 1: A Month Later
I’ll be honest; when I found out Kanye West was dropping a new record with Ty Dolla $ign, I was ecstatic. Sure, Kanye has been outspokenly racist, bigoted, and outright disrespectful towards numerous groups for the last couple years. But we’re talking about the same guy who made The Life Of Pablo, one of my all time favorite rap albums.
At first, I wasn’t really convinced he would even drop the album given his track record (Yahndi, Cruel Winter, etc.) With that being the case, it was really difficult for me to get myself hyped up for it. Imagine my disbelief when I asked people at work if they were ready for a new Kanye album and heard, “He’s still making music?”
Then, it dropped. ON TIME!!! Talk about disbelief. Though the title track had been out for a few months at that point, I don’t think I was alone in the thought that that could be all we ever heard from this record. ‘TALKING’, featuring Ye’s oldest, solidified that this was really happening.
Like Donda, I was not super in love with Vultures 1 after my first time through. I felt that Kanye was grasping for straws at this point, like $ was just doing this to stay relevant. I still don’t completely vibe (and surely don’t agree) with a lot of the content of this album, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t in my every day rotation.
Just to name the obvious few, ‘PAPERWORK’, ‘BURN’, and ‘CARNIVAL’ are some of my favorites. If you haven’t read about Ye’s dispute with Ozzy Osborne over his use of a Black Sabbath sample on ‘CARNIVAL’, you definitely should. The guitar on ‘PAPERWORK’ is some high level gym music for me, and I can’t help but mention the ‘So Appalled’ callback at the end of ‘PROBLEMATIC’.
But you wouldn’t have a complete Kanye West album without some truly questionable lyrics. As I briefly mentioned before, Kanye has elaborated on some of his not-so-popular Anti-Semitic takes in the last few years. Instead of using this drop as a platform to apologize and reconcile for those ideas, he doubled down on them in both ‘VULTURES’ and ‘KING’. The first time I saw the track list, titles like ‘BEG FORGIVENESS’ and ‘BACK TO ME’ really convinced me he wanted to backtrack on his ideas and make one last attempt at getting his wife back.
To sum it all up, I love this album. You’ll have a hard time putting a Kanye album in front of me and telling me not to defend it. From the first time I delved into My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in high school, I knew I was a lifelong fan. Without a doubt in my mind, Vultures 2 will be just as amazing as its predecessor. It’s scheduled for release on April 10, 2024 on Kanye’s website, Yeezy.com.
