By JADYN IBY
Arts Editor
Kanye West released one of his new albums, Vultures 1, out of a three-part trilogy on Feb. 10, of this year, with many listeners being confused on whether or not this is actually Kanye’s album because of how little he was featured throughout.
Kanye’s long-awaited album was set to release last year, but he kept pushing the release date, leading the album to release way later to February of this year.
There are a total of 15 songs within the first album of the trilogy that I listened to, lasting 52 minutes in run time. Some of the albums featured artists include, Ty Dolla $ign, Travis Scott, Lil Durk, Bump J, Chris Brown, Mike Tyson, SOUL, J. Rey, Quavo, and even his own daughter North West.
Kanye is a unique artist, I’ll give him that, but I don’t think anyone else in the music industry has ever had so many people featured in one album.
This first album is a lot different from the old Kanye we all know. We hear many different voices within each song and there are also a lot of samples of different songs throughout this first album.
As I listened to the album, I realized that in most of the songs Kanye is barely in them. In the entire album, he has one to two verses and that’s it in most of the songs. We only have two songs that he is fully solo in, which is not what I was expecting from him.
The album consists mostly of Ty Dolla $ign, and I honestly feel they should have named the album Ty’s considering how much he was featured.
I really enjoyed the songs “Paid,” “Burn,” Fuk Sumn,” and “Carnival.” These songs have just enough of everything to make it enjoyable to listen to.
In songs such as “Paperwork” and “Hoodrat,” I feel as though there is just too much background noise and overpowering vocals all at once. You get comfortable with one beat or verse and then it gets so overpowering or heavy in the next or the song just completely does a 180.
The song “Good ‘Don’t Die’,” seemed to be more on the mellow side comparatively to the rest of the album. It had a very euphoric feel to it and I’m not sure that it really fit in with the theme.
Currently, “Carnival” is West’s most streamed song from the album coming in at 79 million streams. His song “Hoodrat” comes in at the lowest streamed song for the album.
My overall opinion on this album is that there are many songs that start off well and then get too complicated as they continue. I am not a big fan of this new album, there are a few songs that I do really like, but for the most part I don’t think this is Kanye’s best work. I think that it is weird for him to be featured so little. It’s his own album and we barely hear him, which is really disappointing. However, Ty Dolla $ign did a fantastic job in this album, his vocals in my opinion really helped make this album better.
