Kanye West is probably the most polarizing artist of all time. His discography, while amazing in most cases, is to some, overshadowed by his impossible-to-ignore public meltdown starting in 2022. Still, it’s a huge deal every time he comes out with new music.
That is, until 2024. After announcing a trilogy of albums with fellow rapper Ty Dolla $ign at the start of the year, Kanye quickly lost most of if not all of the hype that he had garnered at the inception of his newly announced music. This was reflected by the lack of attention and praise given to February’s “VULTURES 1.”
Since the release of “VULTURES 1,” Kanye has continued to push back the second part of the trilogy. That all changed on Aug. 3 when the second album had a surprise drop on Kanye’s website.
After months of waiting, it’s finally time to talk about “VULTURES 2.” And well, to say the least, it just plain sucks. Whether it’s West mumbling his way through 95% of his verses, the weak features littered all over the project, or literal AI being the best part of a song somehow, this outing just oozes lazy, uninspired, and downright awful slop being fed to Kanye’s now alienated fanbase.
First, I’ll start with the positives of the album. ‘SLIDE’ serves as a decent intro that doesn’t quite live up to the standards set by Kanye’s intros in the past, but also doesn’t make me want to remove my ears from my head. ‘PROMOTION’ also is a good track with a solid Future verse and beat. As always though, Kanye nearly ruins the entire song with his mumbling over a beat that’s way louder than it needs to be.
I’d say that the best song on the album is ‘RIVER,’ featuring the always-reliable Young Thug and Leon Bridges. Kanye’s first verse on this song is my favorite across the project. It’s not amazing in any metric, but it’s great for what it is. Of all the songs released in West’s ‘Vultures era,’ this is definitely the best to me, and it was a breath of fresh air coming after a lot of middling and bad tracks.
As far as positives go, that’s about it. The rest, like I said, is overproduced junk that should’ve stayed in the vault for both Kanye and Ty.
‘FRIED’ is a song that uses the awful chanting found frequently on “VULTURES 1,” as well as a super boring Kanye verse. It shocked me when I saw this song in particular getting a lot of attention following this album’s release. It’s sad to see that this is the type of song from Kanye that gets attention now as opposed to the game-changing and thought-provoking material of his past discography.
‘ISABELLA’ is a ten-second song that I normally wouldn’t highlight for any reason. However, it appears twice on the album. Once as a standalone track, and once again at the end of ‘LIFESTYLE’.
‘HUSBAND’ is another song that appears twice on “VULTURES 2,” except this time, it gets repeated in its entirety in the very next song. Seriously, why would you include a song on the album just to repeat the ENTIRE song in the very next track? I’m not sure whether to call Kanye lazy or stupid because of this track. Maybe it would be forgivable if it was a good song, but it isn’t.
‘BOMB’ is far and away the worst song on the album, and it pains me to say that due to the age of the vocalists on this song. Kanye features his two daughters on this track, which, don’t get me wrong, is sweet of him. But, everything about this song is just really bad. The beat? Awful. The vocals? Annoying. Nothing is redeeming about this in any way.
‘SKY CITY’ is one of the best songs on the album due to its simple yet uplifting beat over some actually pretty good rapping from Kanye. The reason I’m including this with the other terrible tracks is because Kanye uses AI of himself to put on this track. It’s fitting that the best rapping we “see from Kanye” on this album isn’t even him rapping. Imagine all the backlash somebody else would get if they pulled a stunt like this. This is laziness on a level that I’ve never seen in music. It’s so sad to see where we are with Kanye’s music compared to the material he’s released in the past.
The features of “VULTURES 2” are lacking in just about every department. None were super memorable and many of them actively made a song worse. The best features found here are easily Young Thug and Leon Bridges’ on ‘RIVER’ and Playboi Carti’s on ‘FIELD TRIP.’
There’ll be 2 more World Wars before the world cares about Lil Baby again, so I won’t touch on his feature. Future’s verse on ‘DEAD’ isn’t great either, as well as Big TC’s closing verse on ‘MY SOUL.’ I will personally give you a dollar if you can tell me a Big TC song without cheating.
Finally, it’s time to talk about Ty Dolla Sign. For somebody who is noted as a collaborator on “VULTURES 2” along with Kanye, Ty feels like a feature in every song he’s in. He tries his best, but most of the time the song is already unredeemable, or the verse itself is insignificant. I think as a whole though, he’s consistently one of the better performers across this dumpster fire.
“VULTURES 2” is a disappointing and lazy mess that was only released to appeal to Kanye’s vulture-like fans. I will probably never return to this album again, and you shouldn’t either.
My rating for “VULTURES 2” by ¥$, Kanye West, and Ty Dolla Sign: 2.5/10
Best Song: ‘RIVER’
Worst Song: ‘BOMB’
Best Feature: Young Thug on ‘RIVER’
Best Moment: Outro to ‘RIVER’
Worst Moment: Two songs repeated on ‘LIFESTYLE’
