VULTURES 1: An Album Review

FUCKING SHIT. Kanye, my glorious king, how the mighty have fallen, my Icarus, you’ve finally flown too close to the sun. And now the Vultures have come, to pick apart your corpse and unravel your distasteful lyricism, crunchy beats, and shitty opinions. To begin this album review, we should travel to the beginning. The announcement of the album. Kanye, to put simply is my favourite artist. And hearing a new album being announced was very exciting. Fast forward to constant delays and political rants, I treated Vultures as the album that would reignite Kanye’s career and prove he was still in control of himself. Boy was I wrong. Vultures, in my honest opinion is the worst Kanye album. Now before Carnival fans start screaming and shouting about how I’m wrong, I have two words. Kill yourself. Shut the fuck up, stop huffing copium and wake up, this is a shit album, this is not Kanye, this is not music. Now, to begin this review I’ll break down a few songs and explore the positives and negatives they each possess.

STARS:

STARS. I like it. When listening to it, I was eating dinner after work. STARS actually got me pretty excited and I had a pretty positive outlook for the rest of the album. I was wrong. The soft (if that’s even the right word) angelic vocals at the start brought hopeful optimism, with its constant rhythmic switches, it constantly kept me on my feet, wanting to listen more and more. Ty really put his all in this album and I can hear his rough voice clashing against the clusterfuck of what Kanye calls drums, but through all of this, his vocals still proved worthy of high praise. Kanye on the hand, he was alright. It was nothing special, the bars were basic but solid and managed to fill much of the already soothing instrumental. But the stars fall out of alignment when I listened to paid. STARS, a strong 6.

PAID:

The beats, perfection, as usual Kanye’s producing is top notch despite sounding like he made it through garage band on a fucking iphone 6. Its clunky unfiltered drums made me feel like my speakers were broken but it somehow still worked and proved to be quite memorable and different. Ty’s vocals as usual provided a very enjoyable experience, his hooks are impressive, making me bop to “im just here to get paid” but as I was bopping to this groovy hook and to be honest a really good introduction to a song, I happened to notice weird high-pitched noises scattered in the background. Like Yoko Ono’s bloodcurdling shrieks of what she calls singing, Kanye’s high pitched shrieks was honestly just funny. His high-pitched deliveries sounded like he was a child. To support these childish deliveries, the lyrics or what braindead fans call “bars” matched its childish nature. A certain bar that spoke out to me was “old stomach is the new ass”. Kanye. Please. Despite Kanye’s gurgling, the instrumentals still kept the song intact and Ty’s verse was quite solid. PAID, a strong 4.

BACK TO ME:

Firstly, I love this song. The opening despite being a bit icky was still fun and displayed Kanye’s creativity in implementing the most random things and making it fit. The drums itself, is… perfect. Time and time again, Kanye shows that he mainstreamed the 808’s drums. But he does it in a way that I find mesmerizing. You see, he compliments these drums with something more primitive and authentic, Japanese taiko drums as well as African drums round out the fullness of the electronic stabs the 808’s possess, creating a very bumpy but fun ride on the rollercoaster of beat making. BACK TO ME does the 808’s best, contrasting it with Lynn drums creating a very fulfilling drum and rhythm pattern. Back to BACK TO ME, Ty’s opening lines that then become the main hook of the song is fucking immaculate, the rhyming scheme etches itself into a corner of my mind that it becomes almost addictive, alluding me to a better version of the song without Kanye. Talking about Kanye, he asks some very philosophical questions like “Beautiful naked big Tiddy Butt-naked women, just don’t fall out the sky you know”, to my answer, no they don’t, and neither is your creative lyricism spread throughout your earlier works present in this shit storm of an album. This small “hook”, if that’s even the right word provides a very agonizing experience and drags out the song, making listeners uncomfortable and putting tension on the listening experience. Thankfully, Ty enters the song again and saves us from Kanye’s disastrous verse. With the beats going again, I was surprised to see a rap verse from Freddie Gibbs. His voice, his line delivery, and rhythm was very enjoyable and managed to make the song end on a high note. The main problem with this song is essentially just Kanye, Freddie Gibbs implemented Kanye’s hook and made it work so I don’t know what Kanye did wrong. But I do know, the Vultures fans just wont be happy when I say it. BACK TO ME strong 5.

HOODRAT:

Moving on, we go to HOODRAT. Theres not much to say here. The instrumentals are nice, Kanye puts on a very throaty voice when singing which I actually kinda liked? Ty as usual did a good job. Now the massive problem. The HOODRAT part. Its overdone, it becomes distasteful, and it just makes the instrumentals messy. HOODRAT is a solid 5.

DO IT:

DO IT is one of my favourite songs, despite its cringe opening lines, the beats, Ty’s voice, and Kanye’s rapping show the duo’s charm and the positive and fun attitude Ty and Kanye have to the production on this album. Strong 7.

BURN:

BURN. I actually listened to this song before the album came out and I enjoyed it a lot and looked forward to seeing its finished version. Somehow the finished version is worse. Ty’s verse is completely cut from the finished version of the album which is just a major head scratcher. Whats wrong with his verse? Anyways, the song is quite addictive and even Kanye’s rap is tolerable, if the song was over 2 minutes I’d probably become addicted to this song but for now I’m going to stick with the leaked version instead. BURN is a really solid song but it also highlights a massive problem that lingers throughout the album. The quality of sound. The album seems quite choppy and static. It doesn’t have the harsh sounds of Yeezus but the sounds remind me of a Nintendo DS. Ty’s vocals sound robotic, I don’t know what filter they put on all of the songs but its honestly not working. Also, Kanye’s lines of “are you not entertained” takes a jab at the obsession of ‘Old Kanye’, at the start I thought it was fun, proving that he can still make his fun old shit. However, it doesn’t really age well when the song you make fun of becomes one of the most streamed song on the album. Boasting a pitiful 1:50 seconds, BURN is a light 6.

FUK SUMN:

When listening to this song I was thinking, damn, despite the album being kinda shit, the energy is pretty fun, as well as the strong connection Kanye and Ty has. You can see Ty influence the lyrics of this album to make it more sexual so I wasn’t surprised when I saw a song called FUK SUMN. Instrumentals as usual is amazing, despite being clunky and a bit crushed, Kanye consistently destroys any doubt in my mind that he cant produce. The lyrics itself suffers from the same problems as DO IT being a bit too sexual. “Janet Jackson by the way I heard her screamin” was just blatantly disgusting. Also, what the fuck was the Alvin and the chipmunk bar. It goes to a point where its so bad its just entertaining. Weak 2.

CARNIVAL:

I hate this song. Its not good. I’m talking about carnival. Ill begin outlining the positives before diving into a more unchained and honest review on this piece of media. I’m not even gonna call this a song because its not. Carnival is a joke. A fuckfest of shit bars that try to resemble “music.” To start off with, the beats… very good. Kanye’s sampling is once again top notch and is the only time I can consistently give him praise. His production skills are something I admire, its just a shame that the lyrics on this piece make it so fucking shit. Some lines that stood out to me was:

·        Let her suck the dick, said she was a proIf she scrape with teeth, I'ma tell her to go

·        On my neck, a bubble bath

·        These hoes wanna fuck my car

·        They served us the porn, since the day we was born, Anybody pissed off, gotta make 'em drink the urine

Some lines I did find very clever despite being disgusting, the line where he was going to put it in her ass like a ventriloquist was quite humorous but still, its disgusting crude, and disrespectful. Playboi Carti is a joke on this track as well, his signature cartinese was on full action so basically I cant understand what the fuck he’s trying to say. The hooligans on this track was a fun touch its just disappointing that the lyrics ruin this track. Majority of these lyrics in the track don’t even make sense, its somehow even worse than Taylor Swift’s metaphorical bullshit. Carnival. Weak 1. There i fucking said it.

VULTURES:

Now, I was going to review the main track of this entire album, Vultures but on further inspection and listens, im not even going to review it. So I’m just going to keep this as short as possible. Kanye, don’t joke about jews because its not fucking funny. Unreviewable. Just kidding, 2 out of 10000000.

PROBLEMATIC:

PROBLEMATIC’s opening reminded me of the start of Bound 2, its more somber tone surprised me and almost reminded me of a more Kanye as explored in the latter half of The Life Of Pablo. Ty’s singing is extremely well done when you ignore the shitty mixing of the vocals and instrumentals. Kanye’s rap was bearable for majority of the song and the ending line was a nice callback to So Appalled. As most reviews are biased I will bump up the score due to my nostalgia boner for older Kanye music. A nice song, strong 7.

Ending thoughts: Vultures was just disappointing. I don’t agree with what The Needle Drop said about this album because a critic should be able to occasionally separate the artist from the art but in this case im separating a mad man from his sex doll of an album. Vultures has left an impression on me that will forever make me mad. I hope Vultures 2 will be better. My final thoughts end with: Vultures, a weak 2.