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Kanye West & Ty Dolla $ign: Vultures 1 review – weak lyrics from a witless edgelord
There are bright moments on this much-delayed album, mostly from vocalist Ty Dolla $ign, but West’s own verses are profoundly depressing
It’s still uneven in a way that occasionally makes you wonder what on earth Volumes 2 and 3 of Vultures are going to sound like: what price their contents if his big comeback finds room for stuff like the limp title track and Hoodrat, based on an initially pleasingly chaotic and relentless sample that’s allowed to ramble on well past the threshold of endurance? Another interpretation is that he’s a kind of nuclear-powered edgelord, looking to provoke a reaction, which he certainly did, one that went far beyond online outrage and led to a spike in antisemitic attacks, among them synagogues and Jewish cemeteries vandalised with the phrase “Kanye was right”. The cover design may have been changed so it no longer evokes the work of reprehensible black metal band Burzum, but there’s a lot of dialling back on West’s recent apology to the Jewish community, by way of awful jokes and boasts: he can’t be antisemitic because he “just fucked a Jewish bitch” offers the title track; jokingly comparing himself to the disgraced R Kelly and Bill Cosby on Carnival; rapping “antisemite / still the king” on King.
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