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“Vultures 1” is Ye’s new album, released Saturday under his full name, a co-promotion with rugged R&B singer Ty Dolla $ign, and probably his most compelling effort in years, which actually means very little considering his last three outings. – “Ye”, “Jesus Is King” and “Donda” – seemed to fall apart as you listened to them. Ye’s impulsiveness used to be her great strength, injecting many era-defining rap hits with megadoses of spontaneity and surprise. But somewhere after the witty snarl of 2013’s “Yeezus,” his brashness turned to carelessness and the music became muddy and shortsighted.
You may already know all of this, but if it feels like I’m scraping the sides of the peanut butter jar right now, you should listen to this album. There are no new sounds, just recycled timbres from their back catalogue. There are no new perspectives, only more grievances and sadness. Sure, Ye returns to rapping with fuller, locomotive sentences, but whatever she manages to stand out from the mix she does so with shock value. There’s a particularly off-putting punchline that plays with the idea of Manhattan traffic jams and morning sex that, while technically clever, will ultimately make your brain feel like it’s just been given a wedgie. Exhaustingly, it happens during a song called “Problematic.”
Speaking of being troublesome, did Ye spend the last two years of his life making all those ugly comments about the Jewish people just so he could irritate everyone and profit from the consequences? It sure seems like it. On the album’s stern title track, he defiantly asks, “How am I anti-Semitic?” He then answers his own question with an unprintable line about sex with a Jewish woman, which, at this point, has become one of his standard lyrical tropes. Whiten. On the album closer, “King,” he raps about being called “‘crazy, bipolar, anti-Semitic,’” then puffs out his chest: “I’m still the king.”
King of whom? High school edgelords? Maybe he Ye isn’t even that cynical. This album’s most memorable hook functions as a flash of honesty and a handy self-exculpation for everyone involved: “I’m only here to get paid.”