Kanye works with Ty Dolla Sign to make a messy, unfinished album that isn’t worth remembering

Kanye West’s history of instability over the past decade has been at times polarizing and shocking, but a bipolar diagnosis in 2016 explained some of his struggles, most of which had not been a detriment to his music.

That is up to the release of “Vultures 1”. Vultures is a collaboration album between West and a frequent collaborator of his, Ty Dolla $ign. This album arrived at the beginning of West’s return to the media after a cancellation by the public over many racist and antisemitic comments in 2022.

These comments caused West to lose clothing and merchandise deals with notable brands such as Balenciaga, Gap, and Adidas. Since his return to the spotlight, West has apologized for his antisemitic statements in an Instagram post on December 26th, 2023 during the album’s rollout.

West apologized in Hebrew, saying he was sincerely sorry to the Jewish community for any unintended outburst caused by his words and actions. He also said he deeply regrets any pain he may have caused and noted he is committed to learning from this experience to ensure greater sensitivity and understanding in the future.

However, after that point, the apology was deleted from West’s Instagram account. Since his cancellation, West had gotten remarried to Bianca Cesori and restarted his Yeezy brand independent from Adidas, Gap, and Balenciaga.

This album was the kickstart to West’s return to the limelight and the work is extremely disappointing to see from a long-time fan of his music. 

Like West’s previous albums, West was extremely involved in the production of the whole album, being credited on every song. Despite this, the album in general lacks a coherent sound and interesting theme that is typically found in almost all of West’s previous albums.

The theme that is most common in the album is sex. The album attempts to dip into many different sub-genres of hip-hop and house music but lacks a sonic choice from West. 

Vultures starts with the song “STARS.” This song’s instrumental has gorgeous distant choir background vocals, with persuasive string leads. West delivers a short 15-second verse that fits the vibe of the track but has little to say.

Ty Dolla $ign’s refrains are more enthusiastically presented with his impressive singing. This song has a 1:55 runtime and has great instrumentation, but lacks length and a song structure. However it had the potential to be fully fleshed out, with longer verses. 

A theme of Kanye having little to say is apparent in most songs on the album. This is apparent in the song BURN. BURN has a classic soul-chopped sample instrumentation that brings longtime fans back to the glory days of West’s discography.

BURN has a catchy and great hook from Ty Dolla $ign, and West’s best verse on the album. In this verse, West dives lightly into his experiences of being used by the industry and media to create headlines.

It’s the only verse on the album where West dives into introspective and vulnerable themes that made previous albums like “The Life of Pablo,” “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” and “Ye.” Like “STARS,” the song is very short and could have benefited from another verse from West or one from Dolla $ign. 

Along with Kanye’s small amount of words on the album, when he does show up, the verses are unpolished or just plain ridiculous. This laziness from West is most noticeable in the song “PAID.” In this song, West raps in a high-pitched voice that is unintelligible. He screams into the mic rapping nothing coherent or listenable.

The song has an up-tempo dance groove and a solid chorus and verse from Dolla $ign, but West ruins the track. This lack of effort from West is also noticeable in the song BACK TO ME.

The song has thumping drums and a hypnotic sample and chorus from Ty Dolla $ign. It’s a classic minimalist Kanye beat that has few parts but sounds full and polished. This song is great until West enters the mic for his second verse. West essentially repeats the same refrain “And beautiful, big [breasted], butt-naked women just don’t fall out the sky, you know?” for a minute and a half in the center of this song.

Hip-hop artist Freddie Gibbs tries to revive the song at the end with an excellent verse, but it’s too late after West’s long, boring, and overstated section. It gets even crazier on the song [F] SUMN. Looking away from the song’s title and lyrics the song has one of the hardest “Rage-Rap” genre beats I have ever heard.

The song has assisted production from producer and rapper JPEGMAFIA, which signatures his out-of-control style, making the song want you to enter a moshpit. Then when looking into the lyrics the song becomes uncomfortable to listen to in public due to its grotesque themes.

I can’t imagine playing the song in the car with family members due to the chorus being “I just trynna [f***] something right now.” West then pitches his vocals up on his verse and does an Alvin and the Chipmunks impression.

The verse also has extremely vulgar lyrics from West even mentioning when he was photographed publicly in Venice last summer engaged in a sexual act with his wife. 

Then there is the song “CARNIVAL,” the most popular song on the album and debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts two weeks after the release of the album. The song’s instrumental is all over the place.

The instrumental is backed by choir vocals from Inter Milan super fans that repeat graphic, sexual refrains that make up a chorus sung by rapper Rich the Kid.

Unlike it’s its rage brethren [F] SUMN, the mixing on this song is terrible and makes it borderline unlistenable. The song also includes a forgettable verse from Ty Dolla $ign, and a memorable verse from Kanye because of more grotesque bars. The song ends with a Playboi Carti feature that is overly drowned out by over-mixed synths but is undeniably the best part of the song and I think is undeniably why so many listened to this song. 

Wack bars from West haven’t been hard to come by in his recent projects, but the sheer density of them in this project is genuinely concerning. On the final song “KING,” West is even aware of this, to make this a song about how he can still say whatever he wants and still gain success. 

Ty Dolla $ign feels merely like a passenger on this wild ride of an album and remains the only consistent thing about it with mostly decent verses. Though Ty Dolla $ign does come off as repetitive as he mainly just sings about sex for the whole album, on songs like TALKING and BEG FORGIVENESS, Ty Dolla $ign does have great powerful vocal performances that are worth listening to.

The only problem with these two tracks is Dolla $ign’s verses are buried after long, boring sections of track on both songs. In the case of the song TALKING, the song barely includes West, but instead a verse from his 10-year-old daughter North.

The verse is cool, yet at the same time I ask myself “Why am I listening to a 10 year old right now?” For the song BEG FORGIVNESS, his verse is after a long drawn-out 3:30 minute intro of a Chris Brown vocal sample, which is both frustrating and boring to listen to. 

For the most part, the production on this album is subpar from West with mixing errors throughout the project on songs such as CARNIVAL, DO IT, KING, HOODRAT, and PAPERWORK. With lazy and ridiculous performances for West, this album comes off as an unfinished mess, that lacks polishing that was usually expected from him.

This album is part of a continued downward trend in West’s projects, as they become more generic sounding and less cutting-edge. The songs that had potential are either ruined by West or cut too short to even get them started.

This lack of focus and perfection that fans used to expect from Kanye now feels long gone. He ends up relying on Ty Dolla $ign and various features to slug him through this project and cash in a paycheck.

I am tentatively looking forward to West and Ty Dolla $ign plan to drop a sequel Vultures 2 later this year. As a Kanye fan I have little doubt that Vutures 2 will sound any different but I reserve hope that he might pull it together eventually. 

LIGHT 3/10

BEST TRACKS: BURN, STARS, BACK TO ME, PROBLEMATIC 

WORST TRACKS: CARNIVAL, VULTURES, HOODRAT, PAID