2024-02-27 18:11:48
Let the critics say what they want: Vultures 1 is almost certainly the best studio album an anti-Semitic former US presidential candidate, Trump fan and Hitler admirer will release this year.
Or more correctly: probably. After all, there will be two more parts of this in 2024 Vultures appear. In other words, the cooperation project that Kanye West, who is now desperately having to give the enfant terrible (between photos of his wife Bianca Censori that tastefully forego textiles and numerous expressions of his provocation reflex, which has long since been diagnosed as pathological but is certainly annoying once and for all) together with Mund, who mostly only acts as a secondary sidekick (and, as we know from the photos of the current Mrs. West mentioned, not even appearing on the record’s streaming artwork) Ty Dollar $ign as ¥$ recorded and announced since 2018, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly.
But while the surroundings are causing a lot of fuss once more and at West (at the other end of the spectrum, for example Deathspell Omega) probably just really no longer separate the art from the artist cantakes a somewhat subjective look at the substance of Vultures 1 simple, quite surprising views: West succeeds (admittedly also because it’s miserable A wound is still not digested in its disappointing mass and then creatively for Ye might hardly go further downhill – so the bar is low) an album that (at least from a musical point of view) is definitely better in quality than what is being made everywhere…
…but you still don’t really want to enjoy it. An ambivalence that is very easy to fathom, but at the same time leaves you perplexed.
First the positive aspects. Vultures 1 With a playing time of around 55 minutes (depending on its completeness), it was only slightly too long (where you explicitly only get a double at most). Fuck Summ and the – originally better mixed, but now Durk Banks may have – title track (“She want me to put some of this coke in her butt, ugh/ She Russian, I beat up the pussy for Ukraine“) as string-singing meandering fillers alongside Beg Forgivnessa throbbingly meditating, seemingly endlessly dragging Chris Brown-meets-JPEGMAFIA-Adaption von Joe Goddards Gabriel should have been shortened noticeably). When laid out as a whole, the record creates a harmonious, dense atmosphere in a successful flow, which doesn’t need any brilliant moments in the smooth production to settle into an unspectacular class and create some great scenes.
The beginning with the soulful introductory duo, which is almost tender and optimistic over a calm choir Stars and Keys to My Life turns out great and its pumping beats lead to a catchy hook Paid successfully resolved: a look at the credits shows Denzel Curry quoted alongside The Police flash where the actual employees are working on the work Vultures 1 quite surprising across the board.
In a catchy fragment Back to Me show Freddie Gibbs and Quavo loosen up, the smooth grooving hoodrat shines on Mike Tyson on its own. The bass-heavy one Do It hastens almost classic, the subcutaneous Paperwork works with a sharp-edged minimalism to industrial and Burn is exemplarily poppy and relaxed.
And during Good (Don’t Die) meanwhile because of I Feel Lovecopyright disputes were removed from the context (but clarified the hit understanding of the accomplished, simplistic sampler West). Carnival (as already appropriated by Trump “Wow“stadium dozing) and Problematic (as a contemplative fanfare reduction) Vultures 1 then an almost subversive finale.
Decisions like these that can be seen as successes from an artistic point of view apparently don’t play any role for Kanye at least now. What counts is not what serves the work, but rather how it is able to create attention beyond its actual level of impact at all costs. Ultimately, Kanye is aiming at his own kneecaps on the level of content – controversy for the sake of controversy has to be the only source of friction.
Of course, he always had a penchant for lyrics that were definitely intended to be scandalous. But lines like “How can I be Anti-Semitic? I just fucked a Jewish bitch“ (which, by the way, can’t mean Bianca) or “Anybody pissed off / gotta make ‚em drink the urine / Now I’m Ye-Kelly, bitch / now, I’m Bill Cosby, bitch / Now, I’m Puff Daddy rich / that’s #MeToo me rich“ as a sledgehammer that has to be particularly offended.
That Talking His fabulous, deeply typically melancholic James Blake production was wasted on the (yet?) non-existent talents of daughter North West, who with the bumpy shaking rhymes “It’s your bestie, Miss, Miss Westie/ Don’t tryna test me. It’s gonna get messy“ but it makes for one of the most persistent lines on a record that is hardly technically relevant in terms of rap, and is unfortunately entirely and absolutely symptomatic.
But that doesn’t mean you have to be really smart regarding the cooperation project. If, for example, the personal is political, and the political is, conversely, personal, how can it be achieved? Vultures 1 to be neither one nor the other in its tightrope walk of banalities and attempted tips? What’s the point in indiscriminate Burzum-Reference in the artwork for such a pushy Christian like Kanye – does the use of blasphemous origins sanctify the forced association with the later racist Vikernes?
There are still more questions, but finding answers to them doesn’t really matter relatively quickly: you simply lose interest soon Vultures 1 as music and is annoyed by the meaningless nonsense surrounding it.
So if Kanye in the final King to a run-of-the-mill beat, a bit of organ and mystical synth touches, creating a sketch that goes nowhere around itself “I’m Crazy, bipolar, antisemite/ And I’m still the kingraps, it’s more tragically deluded than exciting or funny – let alone completely true.
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