A lot has changed in the two-and-a-half years since Kanye West released ‘Donda’, his patchy 10th studio album. The rapper’s star has been in such freefall that he’s now almost persona non grata in the music industry. In late 2022, he made a series of antisemitic comments on social media, causing him to be banned – at least temporarily – from Twitter and Instagram. Instead of acknowledging his wrongdoing and the abhorrent ideologies behind his words with an apology, he told interviewers he didn’t “believe” in the term antisemitism, as if it was up for debate, like ghosts or the concept of fate. Brand partnerships were ripped up, and contracts with his legal team and talent agency were voided.
The consequences of those statements – for which he begrudgingly apologised in December 2023 – are still dogging him. After a listening party for ‘Vultures 1’ – the first instalment of a collaborative trilogy with Ty Dolla $ign – last week, Ozzy Osbourne posted an angry message to social media, revealing he had refused to clear a sample of Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’ for West “because he is an antisemite and has caused untold heartache to many”, but the rapper had used it anyway. West responded pettily: by briefly sampling ‘Hell Of A Life’ from his 2010 album ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ which utilises a sample of the Brummie metallers’ ‘Iron Man’.
After all that, ‘Vultures 1’ could be viewed as West’s make-or-break album. After ‘Donda’ and its sequel – which never saw the light of day for an official release – a total dud record could potentially be legacy-busting, a sign that the Midas who reigned over hip-hop in the ’00s and into the 2010s had truly lost his golden touch. A record that brought him back to those early days of genius wouldn’t magically undo all the damage done – nor should it absolve West for his actions – but it wouldn’t hurt his artistic reputation.
On his first album as an independent artist – not so much a choice as having his hand forced after Universal Music Group dropped him over his antisemitism – West shows glimmers of greatness but also makes it hard to enjoy those moments for too long. ‘Vultures 1’ is mired with a women problem – specifically, that West, Ty and a lot of their collaborators are rarely able to speak on the females in their lives without reducing them to mere sexual objects. “She fell in love with the sword,” West brags on ‘Hoodrat’; “I sliced, I diced, I hit it from the back”, he adds He’s not quite done when that couplet ends, though, adding an unnecessary, gravelly-toned growl, labelling his partner: “Whore, whore.”
Advertisement
Sometimes, when Ye takes a song in another lyrical direction, Ty steps up to objectify. “Fuck it, I scratched another n**** woman up off my checklist,” he sings on ‘Vultures’, shrinking the person in question down to a conquest to be ticked off and moved on from. Such misogyny is hardly new in hip-hop – or either artists’ catalogues or the broader musical landscape in general – but that doesn’t make it any less detestable.
Two exceptions to this apparent rule of the record make for something infinitely more interesting than what’s served up the rest of the time. ‘Keys To My Love’ features the slightest chink in West’s macho armour, through which a hint of vulnerability shines through. The song has him dealing with the dissolution of his marriage to Kim Kardashian, with him reflecting on what she meant to him. “Ever since I lost my mum, you was like my foster mum,” he shares. “Hold me like your only son / Hold me like the homies in the Chi’ when they hold they guns / Hold me like a trophy in the sky when they know they won.” It’s still a far cry from the Ye we met on ‘The College Dropout’, but it’ll have you yearning for those days.
Recommended
Ty Dolla $ign, meanwhile, gets his moment of tenderness on ‘Talking’. After Kanye’s eldest daughter, North, delivers a fun rap verse (“It’s your bestie, Miss, Miss Westie / Don’t tryna test me / It’s gonna get messy”), he turns attention to his own daughter and his concerns about how she’s living her life and his impact on her. “She just doing all the shit I did when I was her age,” he acknowledges. “I don’t know how I’m gonna tell her, but her dad’s just afraid / Of her choices, know that I’ve been through it / I just hope I haven’t been the wrong influence.” It’s a striking moment that strips away all the peacocking for something real.
Those two cuts aside, ‘Vultures 1’ is best listened to without paying much attention to the lyrics. When the pair aren’t swinging their dicks around, they’re being straight-up offensive – whether to morals or just to your ears. In the latter’s case, ‘Paid’ finds West interpolating The Police’s ‘Roxanne’ with all the melody and grace of a hen party caterwauling through vomit-streaked streets after closing time. For the former, there’s ‘Vultures’, in which West delivers the line: “How I’m antisemitic? I just fucked a Jewish bitch.” Not to be outdone, Ty adds his own contender for Biggest Oof: “She Russian, I beat up the pussy for Ukraine.”
The gaffes don’t stop there. On ‘Carnival’, West compares himself to R Kelly, Bill Cosby and Puff Daddy before supporting Chris Brown (“This is for what they did to Chris”). A song later, Brown dominates ‘Beg Forgiveness’ – a take on Joe Goddard’s sublime 2011 single ‘Gabriel’ – making the sickeningly audacious move to sing lines like, “You’ve gone too far and you should hang your head in shame” and “Do not come to give me counsel / You should beg forgiveness of me”.
Some casual listeners might tune into ‘Vultures 1’ to see how West responds to all the controversy that’s swirled around him since ‘Donda’. The answer? By trying to show he’s not affected by it; that being cancelled can’t stop him. “Keep a few Jews on the staff now,” he shrugs on ‘Stars’. “We finna go where the stars at / And beyond that / This that rip up the contract / Fuck all that.” Closing track ‘King’ has him repeating some of the labels put on him by the media – “crazy, bipolar, antisemite” – but unbothered. “And I’m still the king,” he boasts. In fact, on ‘Burn’, he implies this sequence of events has been nothing but liberating: “When my campaign turned to canned pain / I burned eight billion to take off my chains.”
Advertisement
Shut out the words, though, and you’ll find some interesting creative decisions across parts of the album. The choral chant of ‘Carnival’’s intro collides with a wall of overdriving fuzz, bringing with it some ominousness and urgency to a record that sometimes lacks that killer punch, elevated further by the grinding guitar that cuts through between verses. The Quavo-featuring ‘Paperwork’ introduces fiery Brazilian funk to Ye and Ty’s oeuvres, while ‘Good (Don’t Die)’ – which boasts another contentious interpolation in Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ – strips back the layers to create something largely airy and light, save for the crunching riffs that punctuate West singing: “Don’t die, don’t die.”
Some moments hark back to the West of yesteryear. ‘Stars’ is reminiscent of ‘The Life Of Pablo’’s ‘Ultralight Beam’, but does not burn quite as bright; ‘Burn’ is so sublime in its soulful sound that, before Ye starts rapping, you could be fooled into thinking you’ve jumped into a time machine back to 2004. ‘Problematic’, too, feels like a sibling song to that era, with subtle flashes of the darker twists of West’s later works.
Up there with ‘Burn’ as one of ‘Vulture 1’’s best cuts musically is ‘Talking’, which whips between the abrasive yells of “You don’t want no problems, you’re just” and the pitch-shifted, smooth singing of James Blake. Later, as the track shifts from North’s guest appearance into a takeover from Ty, the brilliance grows, his chorus smothered in crushed velvet synth lines and cymbal smashes that combine to make something divine. Like other parts of the album, it’s just a shame it’s let down by poor mixing that takes the shine off.
As much as the production and music save this album from being a disaster, there are some blips in the sonics, too. Chief among them is the aforementioned ‘Beg Forgiveness’, which is devoid of any of the charm of Goddard’s original and trudges through its six-minute runtime, while ‘Hoodrat’’s screams and mechanical repetition of the title are increasingly grating.
‘Vultures 1’ might not be the total dud that could put Kanye’s career six feet under, but it is far from one of his best efforts either. It’s more cohesive than ‘Donda’ – although that’s not hard, given it’s about half its length – and includes some well-curated guest spots from Travis Scott, Playboi Carti and India Love. Ty Dolla $ign sounds spectacular on the record, too, even if it does make you question why he’d choose to be overshadowed by his collaborator and the baggage that comes with him. For now, though, it’s onwards to March’s ‘Vultures 2’ and, hopefully, several changes in attitude. Don’t hold your breath.
Details
- Label: YZY
- Release date: February 9, 2024
