Kanye West & Ty Dolla $ign - Vultures 1

How is there not a discussion thread for this album?

im getting old, and i dont want to listen to kanye in 2024

cos no one gives a fuck

^^^

is it 2013 or something

Well, his new song has been damn near inescapable this spring. It's the biggest hit of his career and I feel like I hear it at least five times a day coming out of cars while walking through the city. I gave the album a listen this week and was surprised that ILX hadn't discussed it yet.

it does seem like this one has a lot more legs culturally than anything he's done in a while and I don't begrudge anyone who wants to talk about. I just personally decided to unplug from Kanye as much as I am able to. muted Kanye and Ye on Twitter, etc

Well, his new song has been damn near inescapable this spring.

What's it called?

i have no idea though apparently it’s the biggest hit of his career

Well, his new song has been damn near inescapable this spring. It's the biggest hit of his career and I feel like I hear it at least five times a day coming out of cars while walking through the city. I gave the album a listen this week and was surprised that ILX hadn't discussed it yet.

― nomorehandclaps, Saturday, 18 May 2024 22:20 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is trolling, right?

'inescapable' is definitely pushing it but they're referring to "carnival". i don't check for kanye anymore but even i managed to hear it a few times

i guess it may have charted higher and broken out in a way little since fourfiveseconds has done but definitely not an inescapable ‘hit’ in the way something like jesus walks was

By “biggest hit” do you mean “the most vulgar, pandering, stupid and bleak” single of his career?

No one was a bigger kanye fan than me and I am done.

I've heard "Espresso" and "Million Dollar Baby" way more than the Kanye single.

there's not much left to say about kanye's actual music anymore, he keeps putting out the same sort of half-finished garbage that he has for a while now and it isn't even bad in an interesting way

it’s probably his best album since the life of pablo but (i) that’s a very low bar and (ii) it’s still way worse than pablo, which at the time it was released was his worst album (tho i still like it). “inescapable” and “the biggest hit of his career” is either adolescent or delusional hyperbole, but “carnival” is definitely bigger than anything off jesus, donda, kids see ghosts or ye (other than “off the grid” i’m straining to remember a single track on any off that abysmal streak of dogshit albums). something about its success feels authentically bottom-up after he burned his reputation in the media by going full nazi, compared to the previous albums where he was still a critical darling but made very little imprint. i think (based on n = 1 anecdotal observation) that for a current generation teenager this is the biggest kanye song they’ve ever known. imo carnivals a pretty good song but kanye’s rapping is the worst part of it by far

i can't listen to "head so good she honor roll" without cringing. and i hate the serial killer mask aesthetic of the cover.

the cover is absolutely horrible

This guy sucks butt.

he wishes

let's not inspire him to even worse butthole bars than the infamous bleach one on Pablo

bleach butthole bad built butch butthole

Like most Kanye fans I checked out after Pablo, but recently I've found myself drawn to him again. I've settled into viewing him as a William S Burroughs-type; He's vulgar, mentally ill, a raving lunatic obsessed simultaneously with scatology and a Christian vision of morality. He's low art and high art, sampling Kevin Smith movies and also collaborating with Jon Rafman. He's polarizing, but doesn't fit into political categorization. Maybe I'm just losing my mind, but I like most of Vultures- Stars, Paid, Back To Me, Do It, Burn, Fuk Sumn, Carnival, and King are all highlights for me, and feel similar to his best work from Yeezus.

It's been almost 6 years since I last posted on ILX, so I'm sorry if I'm not reading the room well anymore.

A Christian view of morality that somehow includes antisemitism.

that’s as christian as it gets, tbf

recently I've found myself drawn to him again

What went wrong in your life?

xxxp I think there might be a bit of a disconnect between your idea of "doesn't fit political categorization" and the board's of late.

Nothing wrong in starting a discussion, but a lot of posters here, myself included, wouldn't necessarily consider Kanye exactly enigmatic or "high art" despite the attempted collaborations. He's debased himself many times over, made a mockery of his legacy, his music, and for ex-fans like myself, having us cringe even when his old pre-crazy hits come on. Yeezus used to be my favorite album of his, and now it's hard to go back and listen to it knowing how the story ends afterwards. College Dropout is a masterpiece, and in order for me to listen to it now I practically have to imagine a different person wrote it to feel the joy and triumph of that music the way I used to.

Out of curiosity I usually try and put on his new music once, but I ended up skipping Donda entirely and while Vultures had some songs I found catchy, the lyrics, antisemitism and extreme shallowness (even by his standards) have just kinda reinforced how far he's fallen and how sad he's become. One of my favorite aspects of his music was his production, and that fell off starting with Pablo. Vultures is better than anything since, but it's not remotely the kind of creative sonic achievement his first 6 albums exhibited, and the only reason it's received attention is that it's better than the absolute phoned in drivel he's released for the better part of a decade. He used to be known for genre defining, innovative production styles! Remember those days? That was literally 12+ years ago. His cultural impact these days primarily stems from being a disruptive, billionaire, narcissistic edgelord taking after Trump/Musk et al.

My favorite song of his since Pablo is literally Lift Yourself.

What went wrong in your life?

Honestly, after a traumatic incident in my life, I stopped caring about the moral character of the artists whose music/films/books I enjoyed. I realized that most of the art I liked was created by people who were problematic in their personal lives, and made my peace with it.

It's not a matter of separating them; it's not that easy. I ask myself when these uh quandaries present themselves: to what degree has the act's pathologies curdled the music? In Kanye this happened as far back as 2010 for me. For you obv these pathologies haven't.

I think there's a difference between problematic artists making great art (of which there are many still currently discussed at length here, and in positive ways artistically, such as Miles Davis), and problematic artists making problematic ersatz art. Kanye, imho, is firmly in that latter category now, and not worth much cultural attention.

I feel bad for him at some level. I think he suffers from profoundly serious mental illness and this demon compelled him to torch his career and legacy.

However, others have been hurt too, especially recently. His pro-hitler comments on Alex Jones seem to have been part of, and magnified, a larger wave of antisemitism that I noticed on Twitter long before October 7. “Donda Academy” was utterly bizarre and creepy and showed he was willing to mess up kids’ educations in order to gratify his own narcissism. And the way he is parading his new Kim lookalike “wife” around is utterly creepy to me — almost like a way to harass his ex, the mother of his kids. There are reports that he is abusing this woman.

In short, he is letting his illness run rampant. He is not only embarrassing himself but hurting others.and because his rapping has always been confessional there is no way to separate the personality from the work.

Mental illness doesn't produce antisemitism.

I think “separating the artist from the art” has a hard stop when the artist is literally praising Hitler and hanging out with Nazis.

Put wife in quotes bc i thought they weren’t actually married. Not sure of the status of their relationship. Doesn’t matter — it seems weird to me.

can’t wait for Kanye to die along with R. Kelly tbh

I was proud of ilm’s decision to basically ignore this album until now. The music isn’t interesting or good enough to warrant discussion, and the artist is as vile as Andrew Tate.

Shitty human makes shitty music. The only reason he shouldn't be punched in the face like other nazis is that he does have a mouth full of titanium.

can’t wait for Kanye to die along with R. Kelly tbh

Pretty harsh, but pretty OTM lol

If he'd died in 2013 he'd be deified. Would have been for the best, honestly

can’t wait for Kanye to die along with R. Kelly tbh

I can understand not liking him, but this is a wild thing to wish on someone who clearly is suffering from mental illness. And putting him in the same category as a statutory rapist? Let's at least have some proportionality. Sheesh.

nomorenomorehandclaps

As someone mentioned up thread, his nazi rhetoric and antisemitism isn't something that can be waved away simply with mental illness. That shit has consequences on real people and he shouldn't get a free pass from accountability on this. People with his reach and cultural impact have consequences when they say shit like that, and I don't care how mentally ill you are. We've become way too apologetic with that shit today wrt people in power and reach. Where's the responsibility that goes hand in hand with it?

Wish he'd pull a Bobby Fisher and just go hide away somewhere

i wish he would get treatment and apologize for everything he did. there is something very american about his megalomania and entitlement. the fact that he has ended up the way he has shows how hollow and dishonest the worship of self ultimately is. maybe when he is medicated he could talk about this and maybe discourage people from going down that road.

our country is filled with mini-kanyes.

Real heads are holding out for Vultures 2.