Kanye West has come back from a very controversial two years and released a new album alongside Ty Dolla $ign forming a rap mega-duo in ¥$. Vultures 1 serves as the first volume of a three-part series, which was announced with a trailer on January 24, 2024. The album itself was delayed a week, but it was well worth the wait.
“STARS” starts the album off as the introduction of the Vultures series, bearing a striking similarity to the opener of Ye’s seventh studio album, “Ultralight Beam.” Both songs feature West rapping over a church-like chorus, which Vultures has been compared by fans to The Life of Pablo and Jesus Is King, for this exact reason.
“Talking / Once Again” is a two-part track and is North West’s musical debut. The track features one of my favorite samples of the entire record. In “You Don’t Want No Problems, You Just Talk Like You Do!” by Courtney Renà, released in 2023, Renà lets out a “talking” that fits perfectly with North West’s opening lyrics. After a mood-changing beat switch, Ty Dolla $ign talks about how he wants his daughter to see him as a positive influence and doesn’t want her to grow up too fast, similar to when Kanye said “Don’t grow up in a hurry, your mom will be worried” in his 2018 release “Violent Crimes.”
Kanye dives into the experimental side of rap in his 12th track “Carnival.” Sampling 2010’s “Hell of a Life,” West gives a superstar performance on, in my opinion, the best track on the album, before handing the reigns off to Playboi Carti. Carti, who is going through a deep voice persona after the baby voice era of Whole Lotta Red, continues to impress fans with every single and feature he is a part of, and everyone is impatiently waiting for his next album drop which seems imminent.
The second to last track on the album, titled “Problematic” is just what the title suggests. The track showcases Ye’s return to soul samples, a style of production popularised in his earlier projects such as The College Dropout. Throughout the track, Ye speaks on the backlash he faced following his controversial statements in late 2022-23 while bragging about his influence on the music and fashion worlds.
Overall, the album has very strong tracks, along with some boring ones. Many of these songs bring out the old Kanye, whether it is in the form of his production or lyrics. Shades of The College Dropout, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and The Life of Pablo are prevalent throughout the album and with those being at the top of his discography quality-wise, there is nothing to complain about, and we’ve only seen ⅓ of West’s new music.
