The ever-controversial artist Ye West has finally put out a new album, titled Vultures 1, on February 10th of this year. The last time he made a project was Donda 2 in 2022, which was only released on West’s own instrument, the Stem Player, and songs were added a few at a time. That project was also mainly demos, with very rough production holding itself down from its precursor.
With all this being said, West’s next release couldn’t be nearly as messy as with Donda 2, right? All of this hope was promptly thrown out the window once West went on Twitter.
A Short History of Ye West’s Recent Antics
In October of 2022, West started to tweet highly anti-Semitic statements. This led to social media bans, news appearances, and more, ultimately ending with his guest appearance on Alex Jones’s InfoWars show, where he further showed his affliction towards alt-right thought. Because of all of these incidents, Adidas disbanded its partnership with West, keeping the previously made stock of Yeezy products and costing West around a billion dollars. Overall, this only made him highly aggressive towards the press and currently he continues to call out Adidas on occasion, such as a recent announcement of Yeezy 350s coming back to stores, West then made posts calling the shoes “fake” and “corny”.
In December of the same year, West married Bianca Censori for self-proclaimed “religious reasons”, and went quiet on all social media for the majority of 2023. In November, a collaborative album with West and the rapper Ty Dolla Sign was reported after the duo were trying to find record labels to sign with for the release. Shortly after, a single was put onto streaming platforms titled “VULTURES” under the duo name ¥$. In early December, previews were displayed of a song titled “EVERYBODY”, using a sample of the popular Backstreet Boys song of the same name. On December 12th, a listening party was held in Miami, previewing a lot of songs found on the album, including an especially interesting feature by West’s daughter, North West. The album release date was set for the 15th, but that was quickly scrapped after a massive amount of the samples went uncleared by artists, or outright denied because of West’s recent statements.
The album continued to be delayed, pushing the release date back to February 9th. The track list was also altered wildly throughout the timeframe, and three volumes were announced to come out in the following months. Another listening party was to be held on the release date. While it did happen, the party mysteriously ended early because of complications with the venue where it was held. Finally, after almost two months, the album was released onto Apple Music, and then subsequently Spotify and other platforms. With the album finally in public possession, there was one more question left to ask…
Was Vultures 1 Good?
Amounting to a total of 16 songs and 55 minutes, the album gave fans a lot to soak in. This collection is noticeably more cohesive than West’s other recent outings, while Donda seems like more of a playlist, there is a flow to this album that makes it seem more understandable to be under the same album name. The first half is seemingly weaker than the second half, with the majority of the hits being on the back end of the album. The production, while not as similar to West’s other works, is great and hard-hitting throughout. Although a lot of the hits on the album are pretty materialistic in nature, songs like “BURN” and “BEG FORGIVENESS” go deeper into West’s psyche and mentality, very reminiscent of his older works, especially on The College Dropout and Late Registration.
The most “fun” tracks are “BACK ON ME”, “*** SUMN”, and “CARNIVAL”. All of these songs include a lot of features from artists like Travis Scott and Playboi Carti, and wacky lyrics that can make the listener laugh a ton while playing the tracks. On the topic of lyrics, however, a lot of them go into the recent controversies of Ye West, and there is an avoidant attitude towards all of the criticisms levied against him. This comes to its climax in the final track, “KING”, where he raps “Bi-polar, Anti-semite, but I’m still king”.
It is a disappointing, although expected, path that West is taking in this era of his life, with many of his controversies simply becoming a “us vs. them” situation. Overall, even with these blaring downsides, the album was very strong musically and the following releases should hopefully be as interesting as this one to see develop.
