Vultures is Rough...

Or, the downfall of a musical icon.

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It is astonishing that in 2024, Eminem managed to drop a better album than Ye, but clearly his Hitler era is not yielding good music. Vultures 2 is indefensibly bad, a low-quality tracklist that’s littered with erratic and confused music, AI verses, or old Yandhi leaks that somehow sound worse than the demos. It’s like Ye was in the studio working on the album and accidentally hit “submit.” He left an unmastered and unfinished mumblerap verse on “530,” which blurs into hopeless almost-words and drags on for two minutes, and he used a YouTube to mp3 downloader to retrieve the beat. He butchered “Sky City” with AI verses and removed The Dream, Kid Cudi, and Jeremih—but fans can sleep easy knowing Desiigner was left on the track. I miss the old Kanye, not the AI Kanye, made from a bot Kanye, ChatGPT Kanye. The mixing goes from decent to ass from one verse to another on the same song. Everything on Vultures 2 is clearly from Kanye and they have “Kanye” all over them, but it’s just empty, lifeless, and boring. This may be the first posthumous album from a living artist.

Kanye would approach every album cycle, each creative phase, as a distinct escalation of his ambitions and his self-regard, but Vultures 2 strikes me as another nth-wave rehash of The Life of Pablo. After a disastrous release, his manager revealed that Vultures 2 is getting an update; Kanye has really turned into the Cyberpunk 2077 of music.

Another rerun of playing the art heaux trap messiah feels like a sign of how distressingly far we’ve all come since the glory days of “Through the Wire.” Of course, you can’t meaningfully psychoanalyze a musician by their work, but given how off-the-rails Ye has gone these past few years, Vultures 2 suggests there’s something seriously wrong with him. This isn’t just a bad album, it is fundamentally not the work of the artist responsible for Late Registration.

Kanye has meant so many different things to so many different people at so many different points. He was a hip-hop hitmaker in the 2000s, an angsty haute pop perfectionist in the 2010s, and now, a radicalized pariah whose musical direction is seemingly in its nosedive phase. That last point is bizarrely moot for the most cultish quarters of his fanbase, given Kanye’s recent history of stanning Donald Trump, rationalizing chattel slavery, wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt, and ranting in all-caps about going DEFCON 3 on the Jews. Up through his 2018 five-album run, every time Kanye dropped new music, the anticipation was crazy and the aftermath consumed pop culture for weeks afterward. Since the Wyoming projects, his music barely leaves an imprint—nothing provocative or genre-bending, just forgettable and minimalist production and lyrics with nothing to say, all existing in this meaningless, dull void.

He’s still tabloid fodder for all the wrong reasons, but his antics and delusions used to coincide with also having the biggest album in the world at any given time. When Vultures 1 dropped earlier this year—in the wake of declaring “I like Hitler” in an interview with Alex Jones, reappropriating Klan apparel, and repping Burzum—any sort of reasonable assessment of the album was drowned out by already-tenuous and heavily context-dependent Separate the art from the artist arguments weaponized by various dullards. These blithe dismissals were proffered despite bars like “How I’m antisemitic? I just fucked a Jewish bitch” and “Keep a few Jews on the staff now” making Kanye’s drastic and disorienting political, spiritual, and musical transformation impossible to disentangle.

Kanye’s escalations were thrilling until they were exhausting, the line between those modes being somewhat ambiguous and ultimately coming down to personal taste. If Vultures 1 was aggressively mid, then Vultures 2 is a Kanye project that has never felt more inessential and less vital. The demented sycophants that occupy r/kanye were even flaming this album, a consensus so overwhelming that it effectively snuffed out any sort of delirious denial of Kanye’s evident creative and mental decline. The more optimistic listeners were grasping at anything to frame Vultures 2 as anything but a phoned-in dumpster fire: The first half of “530” was cool; the cinematic organs on “Slide” were dope if you ignore Kanye’s verse; “River” would be fire if it was mixed properly; there are some good ideas in here and if he got rid of these tracks and fixed the mix on those tracks and rerecorded every one of his verses and rewrote the lyrics for everything then this album would be easily an 8/10. But Kanye no longer has the ability or the focus or the capacity to self-edit, and as a result, we will likely never hear these songs in a resonant, or even presentable, state. He is cooked. Adding a line about Jews to a Yandhi grail then fucking up the mix is a perfect encapsulation of where Kanye is now. Yet another excuse to lament and weep before “Runaway.”

Cast aside his politics and outbursts, all of Kanye’s humor and charm has been replaced with lyrics that veer from nihilistic provocation to tequila-wasted messages to his ex-wife, a blend of edgelording and forced candor. Everything on Vultures 1 and 2 is behind-the-curve one-dimensional rage-trap beats that feel somehow more hollow than a bar like “Reach for the popcorn, oops that’s my cock,” which makes “Beautiful big titty butt naked women just don’t fall out of the sky” seem almost philosophical. Granted, this is coming from a man who once rapped about bleached assholes, but at least something like “So much head, I woke up in Sleepy Hollow” has a charm to it. Guess this is the consequence of music being conceived three days before its release date.

Kanye’s ideal for musical stardom was more ambitious than any of his hip-hop predecessors, and that’s before we even get into him more broadly comparing himself to Jesus, Picasso, and Steve Jobs in the years between Yeezus and The Life of Pablo. When he was producing breathtaking works of sweating, heaving blasphemy, he had the talent and the taste to justify that sort of overstatement; from College Dropout to ye/Kids See Ghost, Kanye really was an incomparable figure in modern American entertainment.

Each ensuing album he’s dropped since 2018 has been less meticulous—more slapdash, less perfectionist. The ego is still present enough to drop a mess of unfinished fuzz in hopes that there are enough unsuspecting fans to juice the streaming numbers, but the vision is lacking to fully realize the bits of good ideas. It all makes for another paradoxical Kanye album: Bloated but occasionally focused, tired but occasionally futurist, morally repugnant with enough humanity to supply a fraction of redemption. For all its egoism and longueurs, Donda was a much richer post-divorce search for faith and familial love, and even a banger like “Life of the Party” feels so out of this world compared to the grating scatterbrained dreck offered on Vultures 2.

What is particularly sad to me is how lazy Kanye has gotten. He was always a bit nutty and egotistical, but he used to be intellectually gregarious. When he was making Yeezus, he was fixated on the Le Corbusier Lamp and would frequent the Louvre just so he could see a furniture exhibit. Now, he’s lost in the gooncave and texts Nick Fuentes. The output reflects that.

His heel turn to contrarian-brained Nazism hasn’t changed my opinion of his classic albums as much as it has diminished my desire to listen to them, but for many other fans, albums like The College Dropout or Graduation represent a simpler time and a brighter outlook and a nicer guy. Hip-hop communities across the internet will still compulsively rank his albums and tediously rehash the merits of each, as if it’s a secular ritual to reaffirm Kanye’s status as the most important artist of his generation.¹ As much as I love a large tranche of his music, I have also had reservations and critiques of 808s and Heartbreaks, Watch the Throne, Yeezus, and The Life of Pablo while they were receiving near-unanimous praise from critics and fans alike. But I genuinely couldn’t imagine Kanye releasing a project as inessential as Vultures.

I have compassion for Kanye, especially if the rumors of his addiction to nitrous oxide are true. Everything I’ve seen from him is indicative of an extremely unwell man who needs less attention, needs less outright hatred and more human empathy directed toward him, and needs an actual support structure instead of the cloud of carrion-hungry human flies currently around him. But it’s becoming easier to disengage from him a bit, if not entirely, and this is coming from someone who can easily distinguish his oeuvre from the sad shell of himself he has reduced to. It was hard to root for Vultures to be a return to form after Jesus is King and Donda 2, and it’s even harder to think too hard about him or hear him talk his shit, as he insists on turning each album release into a culture war skirmish and a child-custody hearing. It’s hard to accept as a fan of someone who has contributed so much to music and culture, but anyone who cares about his artistry and legacy and general well-being should move on so hopefully Kanye can realize what the problem is—and that problem is himself. The more we pay attention to Kanye’s slow-motion immolation, not only will it run the risk of dampening the appeal of his impactful and meaningful music, but it also further enables his addictions, his lackluster releases, his insane political ideologies, and the opportunistic vultures exploiting him as he speeds towards his demise.

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1. For the record, here are my ratings of Kanye albums (collab projects included, in chronological order):

1. The College Dropout - Undeniably began hip-hop’s shift away from the bling era and was the precursor to conscious hip-hop, while cementing the mainstream appeal of his trademark chipmunk soul sound. “Spaceship” to this day is one of his most fire beats. (10/10)

2. Late Registration - My personal favorite Kanye joint (depending on my mood), this is a refinement and perfection of the chipmunk soul sound, but with added experimentation including various string instruments and orchestral sounds along with some of his most compelling storytelling. (10/10)

3. Graduation - This album more or less torpedoed 50 Cent’s career, but this was also the first inkling of Kanye transcending from the apex of hip-hop into a full-blown pop star. Love the electro-dance influence, but I’m docking points for the back-to-back lulls of “Barry Bonds” and “Drunk and Hot Girls.” (8.5/10)

4. 808s and Heartbreaks - There’s a handful of beautiful and affecting songs, but it’s ultimately a flawed blueprint of the moody, atmospheric direction hip-hop would go. It’s more influential than it is a classic: Kid Cudi, Drake, and The Weeknd would go on to execute this sound much better. (6.5/10)

5. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye’s musings on fame and what essentially kicked off the second leg of his career. This thing is bombastic, maximalist, self-indulgent, and outright delusional, which makes it perfectly Kanye. (10/10)

6. Watch the Throne (with Jay-Z) - The song about him and Jay-Z in Paris, along with some other bangers, gives this album very high highs. As much as this collab is widely perceived as a victory lap of two greats, I see it as a swan song for hip-hop’s bling era, meaning a lot of tracks here have not aged well. (5/10)

7. Cruel Summer (GOOD Music) - Every single on this album is fucking gas, but the deep cuts are eminently forgettable. (5/10)

8. Yeezus - Aside from him lamenting over systemic racism because he couldn’t get a fashion deal, I love the unhinged rapping, the haphazardly arranged synth-heavy production, the abrasive and off-putting mix, the programmed drums sounding huge, and a vintage soul song to close it all off. (8/10)

9. The Life of Pablo - With eight years of hindsight, it’s inarguably bloated; if trimmed to its most essential 10-12 tracks, TLOP would be bumped up to a 9. Justifying all 20 songs on here is excusing his scatterbrained execution, but this was the precursor of more hamfisted slapdash nonsense to come. (8/10)

10. ye - It’s a good snapshot of where Kanye was in his life at the beginning stage of his mental health issues/distasteful antics. But at seven tracks and almost 24 minutes of runtime, it was both too short and too long. The lyrics contained kernels of interesting insights, but they were ultimately undercooked. (7/10)

11. Kids See Ghosts (with Kid Cudi) - An airtight, mind-bending, psychedelic odyssey through the darkest and brightest corners of Kanye’s and Kid Cudi’s psyches. Both of them are in top form on this one, and this album should be considered a hip-hop classic. (9/10)

12. JESUS IS KING - A half-baked and clumsy attempt at gospel rap. Really wish he followed through with Yandhi instead… (4/10)

13. Donda - If culled down to 10-14 tracks, this could’ve been a great spiritual experience. There’s something potent here—it’s incredibly lonely, all the features are played in isolation, and there’s a huge sense of space to the album. It conjures up an image of an icy church that stretches forever. (6/10)

14. Donda 2 - Donda was bloated enough. Why was this allowed to ever see the light of day? (3/10)

15. Vultures 1 (with Ty Dolla $ign) - Painfully mid. (4/10)

16. Vultures 2 (with Ty Dolla $ign) - Hot butt. (2/10)

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