Kanye Wests first album since his antisemitic rant is empty with few highlights
Vultures 1 is Kanye Wests third collab album, his second being Kids See Ghosts with Kid Cudi and his first Watch The Throne with Jay Z.
This time round he’s decided to team up with long-time collaborator Ty Dolla $ign. Although you wouldn’t be able to guess it.
Vultures 1 is basically just a Kanye album with a lot of Ty Dolla $ign verses. Ty brings virtually no artistic vision to the project, it’s clear that Kanye had full control of the instrumentals and had the final say with everything.
That being said, Ty’s features are all enjoyable. His smooth voice shines through the minimalist and industrial instrumentals.
In fact, the guest features are all pretty great. Highlights include both of Playboi Cartis features on FUK SUMN and CARNIVAL which are super grimy perfectly complimenting the harsh instrumentals. Freddie Gibbs also raps his heart out on BACK TO ME an otherwise repetitive and fairly boring track.
Most of the tracks begin very promisingly; making you think ‘I wonder where he’ll take this’ or ‘oh that’s a nice sample I wonder how he’ll work that into the track’ and then as the track progresses it will dawn on you that this is it… this is the whole track. The songs just don’t go anywhere they are very two dimensional and this leads to a very repetitive listening experience.
Take FUK SUMN for example – although the features are all quite enjoyable the beat is virtually just a blown-out bass line with a very questionable Alvin and the Chipmunks-like interlude.
For every good moment there’s about three extremely odd decisions like the ridiculously high pitch vocals on FUK SUMN or the irritating Jay and Silent Bob sample in BACK TO ME which lingers throughout the song.
The elephant in the room – Kanye’s antisemitism
KING has probably the most egregious chorus from the whole album. “’Crazy, bipolar, antisemite’ and I’m still the King”. Kanye tries his best here to thwart baseless accusations of antisemitism. Except, they’re not baseless at all and they’re not even accusations; it’s a fact that he went on the Alex Jones show and pushed alt-right conspiracy theories about Jewish people.
If he is trying to shake off the antisemitic comments, he’s doing a terrible job at it. As many fans and critics have pointed out the early concept artwork for Vultures 1 seems to be heavily inspired by Burzum artwork. Burzum was a Norwegian black-metal band whose founder Varg Vikernes is a full-fledged card-holding Neo-Nazi.
If this is just a coincidence then it is a mammoth oversight from Kanye’s team. Realistically, at best Kanye is just adding fuel to the fire and at worst Kanye wants to be associated with these kinds of people. Let’s hope it’s the former
Once upon a time Kanye was truly a boundary pusher in the music zeitgeist. Seemingly always ahead of the curve, always setting trends, doing things before they were cool.
That time is evidently over.
There is nothing new or exciting about Vultures 1. It is a Kanye West album in name only.
Feature image credit: Zac Schuss
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