@rehaansiddiqie definitely don't hate ye but it's very insubstantial, Violent Crimes and Ghkst Town being the only songs I go back to. Just hasn't aged super well
@@jaysemitchells497 a lot of great artists havent dropped good material in years, while his music sucks he still has a great discography and that would maybe perhaps possibly make him the greatest living artist
AVAA Vultures 2 lowkey feels like a posthumous album for me the album is a self portrait of Ye losing his passion for art and substituting it with nitrous oxide and bianca censoris breasts
That MF loves catching strays so much I swear he's a Secret Service agent, not the VP pick. Been years since I've seen such a nakedly ambitious politician.
I will never understand how people say TLOP was his last good album like KSG and ye doesnt exist. I really liked a lot of the songs on Vultures 2 but it just feels like he made the album just for the sake of making one and felt so unmotivated.
TLOP - Ye - Donda, if it would be that run (without JIK) and he ended his career after Donda, his legacy would stand. The bad songs would be forgotten, the drama in between as well, and in the end people would look back at the later stage of his career as a very personal, artistically free and musically interesting period. Now that he is falling apart, the bad get's remembered, the good sours and it all just feels very sad
AVAA. I have no interest with engaging with Vultures 2 as an artistic venture, but I am keenly interested in engaging with your artistic interpretations of Vultures 2.
@@israelmedina439 No thank you, I am in the fantano camp who believes that engaging with Kanye's art on merit is impossible due to the volume of the conversation surrounding him. I admit that I don't have the strength to separate my views of Kanye the person from Vultures the album. I attempted to do this for Vultures 1 and failed. There is so much music out there that I refuse to spend my limited time listening to something that there is 0 realistic chance that I will enjoy. Silly? Possibly; but I believe that my beliefs are valid and shared by a lot of the people blindly hating on this album without the self awareness to admit that they were poisoned going into it.
@@RedFoxLevel101 ok I respect it, but I gotta say that Fantano was talking about “reviewing” Vultures 1, as in producing a piece of content out to his massive audience. This is where the cultural conversation matters when one must decide how to engage with art from the standpoint of being platformed. I guarantee you he listened to it though, and would have opinions
Idk, personally I preferred it over V1. It has a cool quality it shares with my favorite pieces of outsider art : it reveals a profound truth about something. Case and point : Rousseau writes his Confessions to show how society has unjustly wronged him, but by doing so he inadvertently writes a gripping insight on the realities of clinical paranoïa. Sade writes his 120 Days of Sodom to shock readers and pass time while in prison, but in doing so he reveals the dehumanising power at the heart of every act of violence (a few years before the Terror, and centuries before WWII, violence becomes, in the final chapters, an arithmetic problem, life becomes something to be represented through equations and graphs). Back to Kanye : Vultures 1 was a mess, a guy going through a divorce and using his single status as an excuse to let his ID take over. Imo it was beautiful in that mess. Vultures 2 aims to be a more apologetic album. After witnessing the self-destructing nature of decadence, he tries to get back on his feet. IMO, the mission statement of the album is : seeking absolution by trying to win back the people he pushed away in V1 (Kim, his audience...). In trying to do so, he reveals the truth behind that kind of desire : its self interested nature, and the half-assedness of its expressed repentance. When a divorced guy drunkingly calls his ex 6 months later to say he's sorry about everything, the call is not about her ; it's about him, and his desire to feel good about himself (he wants her to prove to him that he is worthy of forgiveness, worthy of feeling complete again, of being accepted). In that context, "Husband" and the surrounding tracks make sense : his strat to winning Kim back isn't to admit his faults and change his behaviour ; after all this isn't about her, it's about him and his desire for absolution. No, his strat is to double down and portray himself as the victim -> he isn't at fault here, the problem is that women only care about cash and fame when they should care about having a husband. The underlying hypocrisy behind his kind of behaviour is laid bare. Same goes for his relationship with his fans. PR stunts to try and win back a lost community (apology videos, pandering to audiences...) are often nothing but forms of cynical contempt towards that community. Here, that cynicism is made bare : he makes vague gestures towards fan demands, and tries to resurrect the "old Kanye". He goes back to featuring more political lyrics and talking about racial issues (mentions of the prison system), he features beloved "cut tracks" of his past, including an "old Kanye" track... problem is, he always does so in the most insufferable way possible : those concessions are awkwardly tucked in the album, they are half-assed (unfinished tracks’ youtube rips, IA verses, discussions of the prison system shoved in a "divorce" album etc.). As such, they reveal the contempt he has towards his audience. So yeah, IDK. The album is a mess, BUT, I love it for that. For me it's cohesive : it’s about an album about the ego-centerdness and contempt behind repentance-tinted apologies. It misses the mark in every way possible, but I find beauty in that failure 👌 in the same way that I find beauty in Rousseau’s Confessions.
@@professorskye i totally understand 👍 plus, I mean, the album and everything around it is super problematic ; I’ll voice my opinion as to why I enjoy it, but you’ll never catch me defending it to people who don’t 👌. At the end of the day, I guess my enjoyment of the albums mostly comes from the fact I enjoy listening to it (for all of the re-used ideas, lazy lyrics, unfinished mixing and lack of cohesive vision, I still find it catchy and enjoyable to listen to on a superficial level) -> it all boils down to apples and oranges haha
Ye humming in the background in BOMB sounds so sad while everything else in the song is happy and fun and childish... although Ye's sadness feel like a childish sadness if that make sense... idk, there's something there I'm sure. I'm kind of surprised I haven't seen nobody talked about it yet
AVAA As someone who was a massive Kanye fan for many years I dropped all my interest completely when vultures 1 released. Outside of the music he showed a clear lack of care for his fans, constantly delaying album releases, showing up to listening party’s late and unprepared as well as being a just constantly going on bipolar fuelled rants. His music also lost all of the charm it once had, lyrics became lazy, insensitive, stupid and unfunny, production became formulaic and extremely rough around the edges and its pretty clear this isn’t going to change any time soon. Having no faith for Vultures 2 or really any interest I only clicked on it because Spotify pushed it on to my homepage and I actually got excited when I saw sky city on the track list, a song that had been leaked for years. Immediately lost all hope again when I heard the butchered, poorly mixed result with what sounds like a verse that uses AI of his own voice. Really wish he would’ve retired after Donda if this is how he’s ending his career. Evidently he has the capability to make good music but it’s painfully obvious that he truly doesn’t give a shit any more. Power to anyone that finds enjoyment in his new music but to me it’s just soulless and more often than not songs just sound like ideas that have potential and that’s the extent of it.
Yeah I resonate with all of this heavy you summed it up well Kanye is obv talented but he just doesnt care and is incapable of putting out a compelling project at this point.
@@MagsinoAqua that is indeed a good song, but Donda has FAR too much bloat on it for me to take it seriously as an album collective. Jesus is King and Vultures 1 have a good track or two on there as well but far below the standards of what Kanye was putting out including and before 2018
@@Audreythescrub i agree but atleast we have to agree that conceptually the narrative thread of donda is somewhat there aswell as sonically, jail - come to life - moon - hurricane. your right its defo not on the same level as his 2018 stuff but i feel he's still adding to the game with donda. With vultures its the first time where hes both borrowing from the game without giving anything back and simultaneously hurting his catalogue just by sheer quality control. i also think that bloat is going to always be on a kanye album aside from his 2018 realeases (ksg - ye). Its just a biproduct of testing and pushing boundaries, unfortunately hes just lost the care to cut down the fat.
this album is just crazy . i cant fucking deal with it. i cant believe kanye thought he could get away with this shit? With us sleuths around? no way! he thinks he can just feed us any garbage and we'll just chomp at the bit? Buddy, even I've got more self respect than that.
I hope I don’t get shat on for saying this, but as an Orthodox Jew (someone else who wears the tiny hat everywhere and keeps the sabbath), seeing Ye fans be bummed about antisemitism makes me kinda sick. I was in public high school when Ye said his hitler crap and seeing people in the hallways wearing his merch and continue to worship a self proclaimed Nazi made me feel unsafe and unwelcome wherever I went. It’s not like facing antisemitism (ranging from “jokes” to slurs and overall avoidance) was anything alien to me at my school but it got so, so much worse with the release of Vultures. All this just makes me pissed and I feel the sadness of Ye fans. I owned every one of his records, but It was still upsetting when people talk about how much they miss Ye when I miss feeling safe
@@user-po6yg4tg3h i haven’t lived your experience, but i can tell you that most people do not at all worship his behavior. i really respect you for saying this though.
Imo vultures 1 is bad as a kanye album but has songs that in the catalog of most other artists would be mid to high tier, but there are some songs that are still bad by any metric. Terrible in comparison to the rest of ye's catalog, passable or perhaps a bit bloated when judged more generally. V2 on the other hand is hot garbage with maybe 1 or 2 decent songs.
AVAA. In my opinion, the Vultures series is like Kanye's Screwtape Letters. All of the Seven Deadly Sins are on full display. It's self-indulgent and untameable by design. That doesn't make them good, not by a long shot, but I do think that if a miracle happens and Kanye finally gets the help he needs, it will somewhat redeem these albums and put them in a vastly different context. I'll have to see it to believe it, but the more time passes, the more I am begrudgingly seeing the vision here.
I really like this angle, I suspected something along these lines at first but I don't think he's that clever or self-aware right now. Everything he is doing feels like it's just instinct
AVAA, I saw a TikTok that said that Kanye’s album history is like the progression of an Alzheimers patient’s signature. Seems a bit harsh but as much as you like his last 5 albums, they clearly showcase the deterioration of his mental state, maturity and support systems.
AVAA. Professor Skye, I have been watching you for years now (since 2022) and I have never laughed so hard at something you said until you said you don’t “meat ride” you “observe meat” I almost shit my pants and had to change my underwear when I heard that. I am also apart of the Youth that Ye wants to Influence & might I add that YOU influence me just as much as Ye does with your Analysis on Art. Much Love Professor Skye 💜
avaa. been a huge kanye fan almost my whole life. through every controversy. i think we have to reconsider the way we speak about him. i really feel like since at least 2016 he’s been coasting. his work became self referential in a very modern and online way that was definitely thrilling in its early stages but has become tired at this point. the fact of the matter is he’s a relic of a different era of music. while he deserves respect for managing to stay on top as long as he has, a lot of that was through pure brute force, telling everyone about his genius for so long instead of showing it. he can still make very interesting creative choices just by the sheer power of his ego and personality but he’s no longer the leader of the culture in the way he maybe once was. and i do feel it diminishes some of his contemporaries, who are stably making great music late into their careers, to call him a genius so unequivocally and not award that moniker to others who have even influenced him. he’s gotten to a point where he in interviews is claiming credit for inspiring artists and movements that bear no resemblance to him (future and thug) he even started during the donda era really heavily leaning on the fact that he was born in atlanta to kind of tie himself to that area. when he was doing it at the time, it felt genuine for whatever reason. i was at the first donda event in atlanta. but now it all just feels so hollow.
I agree, this album has no direction or a story, but something tells me that it's the point of the album, he doesn't care about making music anymore, everything is being leaked, everything he drops is surrounded by controversy. and Ye never was the type to give the fans what they want. So I guess the direction of this album is that he doesn't care anymore?
I would say he did give the fans what they wanted this time, which is part of why the album sucks. Before he would do what he wanted to do, didn’t matter what fans wanted, it was about what he felt like creating. But adding 530 and sky city to the album is straight up fan service. Throwing those songs on V2 is like Star Wars bringing back Palpatine. Just doing what he thinks people will like rather than actually presenting new creative ideas.
Hey ! Coming back a few weeks after the release of the vid + my initial comment, because I think I’ve had a small revelation about the theme of the album. Kanye has previously mentioned feeling uncomfortable in regards to the explicit content of his songs, especially when considering his daughter and her education. In that context, I was really puzzled with the choice of 1) doing these albums, and more specifically 2) featuring his daughter in both of them. My theory : part of the raison d’être of this project is to teach his daughter the dangerous nature of men and the temptations of fame and money. With those lenses, some of the creative decisions make more sense : who are the vultures ? Well, the men and women hovering around Ye and making money from his suffering ; but also, it could refer to Ye himself, who was never able to get rid of his porn addiction and commit to God. Instead of whitewashing his body of work with more unsincere christian albums - instead of trying to pass as a pious man - he decided to contextualize their explicit content -> he is, and has always been, a vulture, like most men. He is saying in effect : I know you look up to me, but know that I am a vulture -> be careful around men like me. But she can also become a vulture : the « education » dispensed here also points towards vulturous women (esp in Vultures 2). In order for her to not turn out like them, she should marry a good man and escape the temptations of money and fame that corrupted them -> the song « husband » makes more sense in that context. With that reading, there is a sense of Ye giving up on his dreams of redemption and pandering to his base instincts ; but, in doing so, trying to save the last pure thing in his life : his daughter - whom he’s previously compared to Donda, in regards to her heart and wisdom. That doesn’t make the album much « better », it’s still trashy and messy. But it does make it more conceptually interesting + the new mixes makemore fun to listen to 👌
AVAA MY BOY as an avid leak listener, the album was completely different than what was seemingly ready to release, it feels almost perfectly. I think My Soul made me cry though, the way TC sings about autism and depression. *i did write this while walking down some of what i said doesn’t make any sense. edit 2- I wanted to say, that apparently Ye has possibly developed an addiction to Nitrous oxide, since its come out that his dentist that gave him those stupid grills has possibly been supplying him with it.
I like the fixation on the process of creating that he's had since Donda (but going all the way back to pablo). The listening parties as Donda was being updated, the 24hr livestream where he's doing pushups & recording music in a concrete room. A lot of this album seems like that taken to the extreme. I mean 5:30 literally is a recording of him coming up with a verse just dumped onto the final album. Not that having a concept automatically makes it good. 530 is at least a minute too long, Sky City is an absolute zombie of a track that should have gotten a full hurricane style re record. I think the run from Isabella ->Lifestyle is where this concept works the best, it starts with the skit, then goes to Husband which is this out of context unmixed verse over a soundscape, and then the two are put together in the context of a complete song in Lifestyle edit: also AVAA
AVAA This album felt like a reverse MBDTF Instead of a comeback return to form cementing his legacy, it is the opposite: it cements that we are seeing a fall off and represents the first time kanye has ever sounded like he was running out of creativity Every kanye album is very distinct and no matter what you think about it you cant deny there was at least some aspect of boldness and pushing boundaries to it, even donda 2 lol But this is the first time it just feels like a re run of prior kanye ideas. There is nothing special about it sadly Someone attempting to imitate kanye could have come up with this
AVAA. I listened to this vultures 2 record in preparation for this video, and I have so many thoughts. I watched the first 10 minutes of this video, and now I know that I must stop now and type what I feel. Perhaps this video will touch on it. But I need to get my grief on paper. I need to get my pain into words. This album, feels like Everywhere At The End of Time for Kanye. And I suspected that we would maybe get something more warped and depraved than Vultures 1 for Vultures 2, but I didn’t suspect anything like this... I am a musician and producer, so I can explain to you exactly why everything feels so terrible and the highs aren’t there. Most of this record sounds scooped out, almost as if there’s a lowpass filter applied to everything except for one or two sounds. The balance of voice to instrumental is often off. It sounds unpolished, unfinished, muddy. Some samples are obnoxiously loud. A lot of the songs are repetitive. Others are criminally short. It feels like sabotage. I wouldn’t recommend this album to anyone who is not already a producer. This is a deep look into the eaten away brain of Kanye right now. The brags are there, but they’re empty and soulless. He does tons of shocking things but they now have no sting. He is irrelevant, faded out and gray. It is a man trapped in loops, in circles, in endless pain. He can’t get out. He has no more passion. As I continued to listen to this record shutting down my producer brain from critiquing and just listened to it as it was, I fell into a rut. I felt lost. Hopeless. I think the tones and words are more important than the song progression itself. Much like poetry. I don't even think kanye knows who he is right now, and it reflects. He pulls from his past but nothing works there. He says things other rappers say, it doesn't work. He says things people say he says, it doesn't work. Religion? doesn't work. He has and is nothing. I know this feeling. This entire album is how I've felt before. This is true despair, without any of the beauty associated with the suffering. This is a terrible album, make no mistake. But towards the end, I was almost hypnotized by how messed up it was. I expect Vultures 3 to be even more distorted and lost, perhaps happy to a fault, an insane drive off of a cliff. And it will fill me with even more terror than this record did. I could feel the direction even at Vultures 1, and now I am more sure of it.
great comment and I agree. On my first listen i found it almost comically bad, but on repeated listens the true emptyness kanye feels right now becomes apparent even in the worst moments. The two worst moments on this album, husband and bomb, went from laughable to extremely heart wrenching; hearing kanye moan as his kids sing with passion that he no longer has. On husband Kanye repeats these mantras about marriage that he wants to believe because he feels so broken and alone after his marriage ended. He feels like a husk.
I'm visiting this album again, two new mixes in. It's a lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot better. WOW. I think prof is going to really like this. wow wow wow wow wow. so far every problem i've had has been fixed. there's still some rough spots but my word. mix and how long a song goes on makes so much of a difference
AVAA Have you tried listening to Vultures 1 and 2 interlaced? By interlaced I mean 1 song from each album. You'll find a story emerging. It's incomplete without Vultures 3, but you can get glimpses of it. I don't think it will change your opinion on the album, but as a fellow super-fan, you might enjoy it. The story that I can see emerging is that it's a Kim diss trilogy. I think the third album will make it more explicit. Love your analysis. Love your videos. Sad you didn't like it. Glad that I love it.
this feels like ye’s version of of dylan’s “self portrait” but if dylan sort of stumbled his way into it. hopefully there’s a “blood on the tracks” in kanye’s future, at this point i’m rooting for him just to be happy. he deserves it for how much he’s helped me AVAA
AVAA Professor, I really respect you for sharing your honest opinion about this record. Completely agree that it's lacking in vitality and heat, which is sad.
You clowning on the stale misogynist themes on this record killed me lol I excused a lot of the same stuff on "V1" because there was often something really compelling going on musically (see "Back to Me"), but here it just feels so exhausted and tedious.
AVAA. Vultures 2 is just sad. Kanye has ofc been on a collision course with his own hubris for years now but he’s never made something that felt utterly devoid of purpose and feeling. I really don’t think he has a passion for music anymore. I’m sure it’s been waning for a while, but now that he’s blacklisted it’s the only thing he has to maintain his relevance. I wouldn’t be surprised if he resents his fans on some level because of this. Also, Professor Skye, if you don’t mind me asking, what’s one tip you could give me to help with my French studies? I’m visiting in the Fall and I’m trying my best to not to bring more shame to America.
Prof, you put in a very admirable effort to give this a fair shot. I do think that if there's anything interesting to say here, it's about how misogyny may be the last refuge of the mentally ill man. Other than that, a complete snooze. AVAA!
Ye's a genius. He is also a deeply abrasive man who struggles with personal upkeep. I struggle to see what about him would be attractive if he didn’t have money. Like women only want him for money, true, but he doesn’t have anything else to offer.
If you read the affidavit by Milo, regarding the nitrous abuse and all the ppl around Kanye just leaching off this unwell man, it really gives a whole new meaning to the name "Vultures". Honestly feels like some kind of elaborate performance art at this point.
AVAA this review putting into words what i've been thinking, huge kanye fan and still am but this didn't move me at all. Still will probably go back and relisten especially as mixes change but as of now, this was just kind bad
AVAA Neil degrasse Tyson didn't really dunk on Terrance Howard. He responded to the paper that was given to him in the way in which he was asked to. Tyson gave Howard his flowers for having an inquisitive mind and was pretty respectful in my opinion. I'm legitimately curious what people think Tyson should have done.
Even if Kanye fixes the production (which he is slowly doing, but I don't like that he has to do that at all), there are a bunch of fundamental issues with this thing that the production ain't gonna fix.
530 and Sky city were the nail in the coffin for me. 530 is literally a RUclips RIP of the leaks that we have and is LOWER QUALITY than the leaks that we have. Sky City has an AI VERSE but you said you dont want to talk about that 😅 Anyway as always AVAA!
It’s obviously not a good ALBUM, but there are a few tracks here I love & that I think I’ll have in rotation for quite a while…Slide, Time Moving Slow, Promotion, My Soul (assuming the mix ever gets fixed) are all really good tracks IMO. At the end of the day, both Vultures volumes fell well short of expectations & the typical Kanye standard, but between the 2 I think there’s enough highs to create a solid playlist that is still better than most of what we will get from rap in 2024.
The album is improving with each daily update. Please revisit it once it's finished. This is basically TLOP 2, with how much it's being updated post-release and how significant the improvements are. the new river is probably ye's best song since donda era...i really think you'll enjoy it.
Do not compare this trash to tlop, this is nothing like it. there is not 1 song better than anything on tlop, other than maybe slide. the whole album is meaningless. he is not even on half the tracks, and when he is he doesn't make it better, hes not in the right state of mind, the laughing gas has rotted his brain.
Who is Vultures 2 for? It’s for all of us - With TLOP Kanye showed us an album getting iterated into a better more polished,more representative of the art vision sonic perspective, message and beat Kanye created. Everything before this was was polished and delivered to us DONE. Kanye let us in on some of the creative process through tlop- changing and leaking and evolving ever so slightly in front of us as we listened to it. Vultures took it further and deeper into far darker,less comfortable, less likely to ultimately succeed and evolve into anything good part of his creative process. These songs are not only not done- they may not even be good enough to ever be done. Vultures 1 still has some real bangers- ( it is Kanye after all) and I guarantee Vultures 2 will too- but he’s gonna make you confront the trash- the mutated fetuses that his cerebral womb must ultimately abort. The fact that this unsettling mess of goop gore slime and excessive noise and emotion- has sparkles of potential greatness shining through ESPECIALLY AFTER MULTIE FORCED LISTENINGS makes it all the more tragic. The emptiness isn’t tragic in and of itself- emptiness caused by a loss of a very real and imaginable potential that was either tragically stillborn myopically and surgically spliced out to complete the art of bringing about a real tragedy as a piece of music/art. Kanye intentionally or not is manifesting success through failure- and showcasing failure and the lack complete and asking the question “are they the same?” As an artist, a genius, one of which great art is expected, CAN Kanye fail in a way other than just giving up and not finishing the thing yet? Can Kanye fail after putting in the totality of his genius,his efforts, calling in all his favors, bringing in all the greatest artists to contribute, drawing upon the most compelling of muses and influences- and ultimately examining this overdetermined social totality and its infinite strings of potential hurt, alienation, oppression, appropriation and violently disallowing any human space allowing actual human freedom. Kanye used to use his music to tear open that prison that is Adorno’s overdetermined totality and make some spaces of true freedom or at least unearth and shine some light on the ones that had been appropriated into silence or didn’t have a loud enough voice or bright enough light to show themselves previously. Kanye has always been able to make the absurd profound- without changing any definitions of the thing mutating. David Stern CAN be the third most important person in the African-American story even though everyone laughed at its sillyness initially then thought about it and realized its wit..then some of us either without the blinders of white privelage or trying diligently to see around them- realized a deeper truth. Under stern’s 80-90s nba- America including black little boys- saw people who looked like their Dads and uncles and neighbors acting like modern day superhero’s. Exhibiting strength and dominance- not only was the nba predominantly black, but with players like Allen Iverson- they didn’t even need to sound like white folks to be successful, respected, and heroic. Most of all little black boys for the first time in American History had examples nee PROOF that black folks could grow up to be rich as fuck. David Stern made sure everyone saw it, knew it, and worked to bring the NBA and its predominantly black predominantly urban predominantly working class player base onto tvs around the world- making basketball the second most popular sport by about the largest margin possible. In huge markets like China it stomps soccer- it has pro leagues in over 45 countries and most teams allowed one or two foreign players- have an African-American as their star player. Sorry for the digression. That’s just an example of a random absurd Kanye quote, lyric, beat or other utterance getting developed towards something that allows for the complexity, and he brilliance, the artistic and the profound to be unraveled and presented. If Kanye leaves Vultures 1 and 2 alone- and we as listeners and critics aren’t able to hear the greatness in these songs-Kanye has proven to us he is on no decline. We NEED him to develop and pull on those strings. He needs to produce and iterate and reiterate in order to create truly complete great works of art. If vultures 1 and 2 don’t become that- I feel that even if Kanye didn’t give us the easy way out by finishing it- as fans, listeners, critics, djs, dancers, radio listeners, and/or Kanye fans we can do it ourselves. Listen to it enough you’ll find your jam. Pump up the base and mix it with a new Kendrick verse, turn that shit up. Damn even carnival makes violent neo fascist skomhead hooligans happy and excited to sing in unison about riding a black man’s penis like a carnival horse. And if that ain’t something new and great- what is? If Diddy and Meek proved you can still be masculine, hood as hell, and a masculine black man - while engaging in sexual intercourse with a person of similar description- carnival showed an African American can appropriate a European white skinhead mob mentality’s brotherhood of violence against anything or anyone that’s not them-into an anthem celebrating and supporting the sexual prowess of African American men. Pretty sure neither example is racist- nor homophobic. But pretty sure no one would have any issue calling both pretty damn gay. And the dialectic absurdity and genius of Kanye West marches onward and as always I’m full form. To all my south side n1??as who know me best, maybe me and Taylor might still have sex”. If a Milan ultra can chant about riding Ty dolla$ign’s member for a prolonged period of time and with a mix of enjoyment and skill- who is to say stranger things have not happened? Don’t worry about Ye. He’ll continue to be the centuries most important artist and we don’t need to like or “get” everything. Although I’m Sure it frustrates the shit out of him! Craig
AVAA one of the most damning critics I’ve seen of Vultures 2 has been from fans of the albums saying peoples expectations are to high. Like man… you really said it all, I expect a lot from this man and this ain’t it.
When I listened to Vultures 1, the album felt like a burnout. Ye sounds tired yet constantly changing his mood trying to cope with the crisis he's going through. So Vultures 2 to me is what comes after burnout - indifference. Ye doesn't care about anything at all. His daughters want to record something? Go ahead. Fans want unreleased tracks to be on DSPs? Change the mix and put it on the record. Can't record your verse? Put AI as the first verse on Sky City of all songs. Vultures 3 better be a Putin album.
@@XenaticLuxobest case scenario is Vultures 3 is getting his crap together and setting his life back on track but there's a high chance V3 is gonna be either unreleased or transformed into different project, maybe a ¥$ album that's not a part Vultures series if not a solo project.
AVAA Professor Skye, I’d love to see a video on how you analyze and study Kanye’s albums; your process. No pressure or anyth, just would really interest me personally
Tbh a lot of what you said about this album I already felt about Vultures 1. The first one didn't have any meaning anyway, there was no priority or focus on lyrical or thematic substance on thet record anyway and just Ye letting the features and Ty Dolla carry every track in terms of quality, Vultures 2 is just another validation of my thought that Kanye puts literally no effort artistically into his music anymore.
Haven’t watched yet but Kanye on purpose make it as bad as possible. He released inferior versions of leaked songs and even ripped some straight from youtube rather than using the files he already had. Its like he gave up a good while ago and told everyone else working on v2 to just release whatever as fast as possible.
@@blunteastwoodI think it’s because they genuinely want to drop all 3 this year, but it’s already August and they’re running out of time so they just threw this one out there as is. I would expect vultures 3 in December and it’ll probably be similar quality.
AVAA I'm personally mixed on it, especially given the new info about kanyes addiction, it almost gives this whatever lazy album a darker edge. In a way I guess it feels like I'm also running on laughing gas and bad coping. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Fried is pretty good I hope ye is OK
Personally sky city is something ive been waiting on for a while and hearing on this album brought me to tears definitely out of place but its beautiful and the best ty vocal on v1 or v2 the ai think is very interesting especially the context of the the after life because they can use his voice forever making songs with Ye
AVAA Theres other bad ones but this might be the worst, at least until they fix it up, but even if they fix the mixing, there's not a lot there worth saving imo.
I hear you. I think it's more so that the mixing gets across the idea. It doesn't have to sound perfect. As long as the mix doesn't get in the way of the song
I felt so proud of myself for immediately catching the Machine Gun sample lol. I think Field Trip is better, catchier than you describe but you’re otherwise on target. Ever since Pablo, I can’t expect an ALBUM I love, I can only expect a few great songs inside of highly inconsistent albums. But this man gave us MBDTF and Yeezus so he retains the right to fall apart personally and artistically.
One weird thing I found about 530 is the fact that it sounds like Kanye is saying “you gotta do wrong in order to do you reich” , I don’t know if this is another hidden neonazi reference or it’s just a byproduct of his pronunciation
I’m firmly on team “washed since TLOP” but it’s always interesting to hear the perspective of a diehard Ye fan on his more controversial new music. AVAA
Kanye’s had like five bad albums, ever since he lost focus after “YE” he’s been on a downward spiral, and I really loved a lot of donda but that album was so bloated it can barely be considered a great “album” maybe a good collection of songs for the most part but if you’re gonna listen to a Kanye album it’s gotta be a well manicured tracklist with minimal filler and he hasn’t given us that since 2018
I hated vultures 1. Every single track. I haven't listened to the entirety of vultures 2, but I do quite like a couple of tracks. Dead is excellent imo. Lifestyle (leak version, not the new one) is good too. Wish kanye did more like these. The rest of the tracks seem meh, sure, but it's weird how everyone instantly hate this album
respect the takes, but I do feel like the real problem with Vultures 2 is the mixing and polish. If it was polished and finished...is it really worse than V1? I think it could feasibly be better than that album, or at least a noticeable progression that could fit within this three-album scope that they are trying to do. maybe just me. it's obviously a failure at this point, but even on Ty's performances alone there is so much potential here
Professor - listen to the updated version of River that they just released this morning (can hear it on RUclips music & the single version (not full album version yet) on Spotify). It’s absolutely beautiful.
I get most of what he says, even when i disagree i can see his point, Skye really strikes me as a intellectual version of los pollos but for kanye, im on the side that kanye has many mid to bad albums, JIK and Vultures 1 are one of those. This album strikes me as a new low for him and seeing this makes me happy because it only can go up from now! right? It can't get worse right? Right!?? Hard to be an optimist in times like these
Very much agree that the album just feels empty. Part of that for me is that there really is nothing to the Vultures Era. The months around an album for me really color the album. It’s about the ideas and emotions that Kanye is putting out around the album. This album feels to have no real ideas
AVAA perhaps artists are allowed to make trash without being labeled ‘washed’. Perhaps it’s the hopeful side of me, but what if he knows it was necessary for him to make a bad empty album. Do the opposite, go against what people expect of you, inversion tactics. Maybe I’m giving him too much credit, but that’s what a genius would do imo.
AVAA its interesting that you mentioned valuators 1 as the story of a divorced man in this one he sounds like on many instances he is talking about his current marriage providing 2 opposing views one of which is the hedonistic almost abusive comments about her wife fallowed up by misogynistic views on how she only is there for the mony and that she doesn’t have anything to provide other than her body and the other is about the emotional connection and the love he has for her. in the latter part of this album some songs like dead or 530 the duality and struggles become more evident. i do believe that a narrative is being told but i totally agree that the over all package seems lazy and all over the place in some parts.
"I don't meat ride, I observe meat"
AVAA
i read this comment, watched the vid, and still almost spat my food out then yelled PROFESSOR PAUSE!!!!!! when he said it 😂 AVAA
bro definitely meatrides, calling Ye the greatest living artist, when he definitely hasn't been since 2016
@@jaysemitchells497since 2021*
never understood the ye hate. JIK may be mid, but Donda was real good
@rehaansiddiqie definitely don't hate ye but it's very insubstantial, Violent Crimes and Ghkst Town being the only songs I go back to. Just hasn't aged super well
@@jaysemitchells497 a lot of great artists havent dropped good material in years, while his music sucks he still has a great discography and that would maybe perhaps possibly make him the greatest living artist
AVAA Vultures 2 lowkey feels like a posthumous album
for me the album is a self portrait of Ye losing his passion for art and substituting it with nitrous oxide and bianca censoris breasts
This comment is gold
well said
Makes me imagine Kanye doing the blue velvet freak out
@@paintshadows9232YEEZY WANTS TO FUUUUCK
the issue is he doesn't have people to write for him / master his song/do his drums.
This aint cheddar this quiche
*don toliver begins to spaz*
@@giogainzI still can’t comprehend that it’s Don toliver
@@giogainz
Love his hook not gonna lie
It’s ridiculous and way too high for his vocal range, but I can’t stop listening to it, it’s so catchy to me
I'm here for JD Vance catching strays, though.
lmfao facts
That MF loves catching strays so much I swear he's a Secret Service agent, not the VP pick. Been years since I've seen such a nakedly ambitious politician.
I will never understand how people say TLOP was his last good album like KSG and ye doesnt exist.
I really liked a lot of the songs on Vultures 2 but it just feels like he made the album just for the sake of making one and felt so unmotivated.
Stop sleeping on Donda ❤
TLOP - Ye - Donda, if it would be that run (without JIK) and he ended his career after Donda, his legacy would stand. The bad songs would be forgotten, the drama in between as well, and in the end people would look back at the later stage of his career as a very personal, artistically free and musically interesting period. Now that he is falling apart, the bad get's remembered, the good sours and it all just feels very sad
@@pjetrsjik is good though
I think the text about him retiring when he said “he has nothing left to say” is so true and should have stopped this album from dropping
L take
W take
That was album release advertising
I’m exhausted
Happens after 1 hour long professor video lmao
AVAA. I have no interest with engaging with Vultures 2 as an artistic venture, but I am keenly interested in engaging with your artistic interpretations of Vultures 2.
Kinda silly, listen to it and draw your own conclusions too
@@israelmedina439 No thank you,
I am in the fantano camp who believes that engaging with Kanye's art on merit is impossible due to the volume of the conversation surrounding him. I admit that I don't have the strength to separate my views of Kanye the person from Vultures the album. I attempted to do this for Vultures 1 and failed. There is so much music out there that I refuse to spend my limited time listening to something that there is 0 realistic chance that I will enjoy.
Silly? Possibly; but I believe that my beliefs are valid and shared by a lot of the people blindly hating on this album without the self awareness to admit that they were poisoned going into it.
@@RedFoxLevel101yeah it is silly
@@RedFoxLevel101 ok I respect it, but I gotta say that Fantano was talking about “reviewing” Vultures 1, as in producing a piece of content out to his massive audience. This is where the cultural conversation matters when one must decide how to engage with art from the standpoint of being platformed. I guarantee you he listened to it though, and would have opinions
Idk, personally I preferred it over V1. It has a cool quality it shares with my favorite pieces of outsider art : it reveals a profound truth about something. Case and point : Rousseau writes his Confessions to show how society has unjustly wronged him, but by doing so he inadvertently writes a gripping insight on the realities of clinical paranoïa. Sade writes his 120 Days of Sodom to shock readers and pass time while in prison, but in doing so he reveals the dehumanising power at the heart of every act of violence (a few years before the Terror, and centuries before WWII, violence becomes, in the final chapters, an arithmetic problem, life becomes something to be represented through equations and graphs).
Back to Kanye : Vultures 1 was a mess, a guy going through a divorce and using his single status as an excuse to let his ID take over. Imo it was beautiful in that mess. Vultures 2 aims to be a more apologetic album. After witnessing the self-destructing nature of decadence, he tries to get back on his feet. IMO, the mission statement of the album is : seeking absolution by trying to win back the people he pushed away in V1 (Kim, his audience...). In trying to do so, he reveals the truth behind that kind of desire : its self interested nature, and the half-assedness of its expressed repentance. When a divorced guy drunkingly calls his ex 6 months later to say he's sorry about everything, the call is not about her ; it's about him, and his desire to feel good about himself (he wants her to prove to him that he is worthy of forgiveness, worthy of feeling complete again, of being accepted). In that context, "Husband" and the surrounding tracks make sense : his strat to winning Kim back isn't to admit his faults and change his behaviour ; after all this isn't about her, it's about him and his desire for absolution. No, his strat is to double down and portray himself as the victim -> he isn't at fault here, the problem is that women only care about cash and fame when they should care about having a husband. The underlying hypocrisy behind his kind of behaviour is laid bare.
Same goes for his relationship with his fans. PR stunts to try and win back a lost community (apology videos, pandering to audiences...) are often nothing but forms of cynical contempt towards that community. Here, that cynicism is made bare : he makes vague gestures towards fan demands, and tries to resurrect the "old Kanye". He goes back to featuring more political lyrics and talking about racial issues (mentions of the prison system), he features beloved "cut tracks" of his past, including an "old Kanye" track... problem is, he always does so in the most insufferable way possible : those concessions are awkwardly tucked in the album, they are half-assed (unfinished tracks’ youtube rips, IA verses, discussions of the prison system shoved in a "divorce" album etc.). As such, they reveal the contempt he has towards his audience.
So yeah, IDK. The album is a mess, BUT, I love it for that. For me it's cohesive : it’s about an album about the ego-centerdness and contempt behind repentance-tinted apologies. It misses the mark in every way possible, but I find beauty in that failure 👌 in the same way that I find beauty in Rousseau’s Confessions.
I follow your reasoning and appreciate it, but the album still just doesn’t work for me. Maybe it will in time.
@@professorskye i totally understand 👍 plus, I mean, the album and everything around it is super problematic ; I’ll voice my opinion as to why I enjoy it, but you’ll never catch me defending it to people who don’t 👌. At the end of the day, I guess my enjoyment of the albums mostly comes from the fact I enjoy listening to it (for all of the re-used ideas, lazy lyrics, unfinished mixing and lack of cohesive vision, I still find it catchy and enjoyable to listen to on a superficial level) -> it all boils down to apples and oranges haha
@@professorskye oh and, forgot to add : great video as always ; it’s always a pleasure to listen to your musical takes 👍
This is a good take. I enjoyed it for the same reason.
Ye humming in the background in BOMB sounds so sad while everything else in the song is happy and fun and childish... although Ye's sadness feel like a childish sadness if that make sense... idk, there's something there I'm sure. I'm kind of surprised I haven't seen nobody talked about it yet
i agree. On my last listen of the track I found it very upsetting hearing him in the background sounding like he's drifting away.
Jid is doing better than jcole, Peggy is doing better than Ye. I think rap is just having a turnover
I think they could all exist at once though. But its true alot of students are taking the place of the masters
Peggy?
@@humanperson8363The students have surpassed the masters, but they're not as popular as the masters. That's the problem.
@@olianderson1606 JPEGMAFIA , had one of the best albums of the year
It's healing
AVAA As someone who was a massive Kanye fan for many years I dropped all my interest completely when vultures 1 released. Outside of the music he showed a clear lack of care for his fans, constantly delaying album releases, showing up to listening party’s late and unprepared as well as being a just constantly going on bipolar fuelled rants. His music also lost all of the charm it once had, lyrics became lazy, insensitive, stupid and unfunny, production became formulaic and extremely rough around the edges and its pretty clear this isn’t going to change any time soon. Having no faith for Vultures 2 or really any interest I only clicked on it because Spotify pushed it on to my homepage and I actually got excited when I saw sky city on the track list, a song that had been leaked for years. Immediately lost all hope again when I heard the butchered, poorly mixed result with what sounds like a verse that uses AI of his own voice. Really wish he would’ve retired after Donda if this is how he’s ending his career. Evidently he has the capability to make good music but it’s painfully obvious that he truly doesn’t give a shit any more. Power to anyone that finds enjoyment in his new music but to me it’s just soulless and more often than not songs just sound like ideas that have potential and that’s the extent of it.
Yeah I resonate with all of this heavy you summed it up well
Kanye is obv talented but he just doesnt care and is incapable of putting out a compelling project at this point.
The professor is taking shots at Leaky Archives
the leaky is taking shots at the archive
I will just say it now. I don't take Kanye albums released after 2021 as canon. It is just a big psy-op.
Try 2018, I don’t see what people (including the professor here) are smoking with Donda
@@Audreythescrub come to life justifies donda by itself
@@MagsinoAqua that is indeed a good song, but Donda has FAR too much bloat on it for me to take it seriously as an album collective. Jesus is King and Vultures 1 have a good track or two on there as well but far below the standards of what Kanye was putting out including and before 2018
@@Audreythescrub i agree but atleast we have to agree that conceptually the narrative thread of donda is somewhat there aswell as sonically, jail - come to life - moon - hurricane. your right its defo not on the same level as his 2018 stuff but i feel he's still adding to the game with donda. With vultures its the first time where hes both borrowing from the game without giving anything back and simultaneously hurting his catalogue just by sheer quality control. i also think that bloat is going to always be on a kanye album aside from his 2018 realeases (ksg - ye). Its just a biproduct of testing and pushing boundaries, unfortunately hes just lost the care to cut down the fat.
@@MagsinoAqua I don’t fully agree with this take but it’s cool and reasonable, have a nice week!
this album is just crazy . i cant fucking deal with it. i cant believe kanye thought he could get away with this shit? With us sleuths around? no way! he thinks he can just feed us any garbage and we'll just chomp at the bit? Buddy, even I've got more self respect than that.
he actually does think that
@@user-pj6oc5gy2q bro been doing it for a few years now
This reads like the chicanery speech from Better Call Saul
@@Soulkinthehuman as it should
@@Soulkinthehuman LMAO hearing it like that made this cmment way better
I hope I don’t get shat on for saying this, but as an Orthodox Jew (someone else who wears the tiny hat everywhere and keeps the sabbath), seeing Ye fans be bummed about antisemitism makes me kinda sick. I was in public high school when Ye said his hitler crap and seeing people in the hallways wearing his merch and continue to worship a self proclaimed Nazi made me feel unsafe and unwelcome wherever I went. It’s not like facing antisemitism (ranging from “jokes” to slurs and overall avoidance) was anything alien to me at my school but it got so, so much worse with the release of Vultures.
All this just makes me pissed and I feel the sadness of Ye fans. I owned every one of his records, but It was still upsetting when people talk about how much they miss Ye when I miss feeling safe
@@user-po6yg4tg3h i haven’t lived your experience, but i can tell you that most people do not at all worship his behavior. i really respect you for saying this though.
I'm definitely not Orthodox, but still, from one Jew to another, the Ye's of the world are never going to win. Stay safe.
Yeah it’s probably the fourth
Only the second I think. Jesus is king and donda are decent and the rest are amazing imo.
I used to think JIK was bad until I heard Vultures
yup. JIK, donda 2 and both vultures albums. all terrible
JIK is good lol y’all trippin
Imo vultures 1 is bad as a kanye album but has songs that in the catalog of most other artists would be mid to high tier, but there are some songs that are still bad by any metric. Terrible in comparison to the rest of ye's catalog, passable or perhaps a bit bloated when judged more generally. V2 on the other hand is hot garbage with maybe 1 or 2 decent songs.
AVAA
I actually relate so hard with Vultures 2 because we both are empty
😭
AVAA. In my opinion, the Vultures series is like Kanye's Screwtape Letters. All of the Seven Deadly Sins are on full display. It's self-indulgent and untameable by design. That doesn't make them good, not by a long shot, but I do think that if a miracle happens and Kanye finally gets the help he needs, it will somewhat redeem these albums and put them in a vastly different context. I'll have to see it to believe it, but the more time passes, the more I am begrudgingly seeing the vision here.
I really like this angle, I suspected something along these lines at first but I don't think he's that clever or self-aware right now. Everything he is doing feels like it's just instinct
AVAA, I saw a TikTok that said that Kanye’s album history is like the progression of an Alzheimers patient’s signature. Seems a bit harsh but as much as you like his last 5 albums, they clearly showcase the deterioration of his mental state, maturity and support systems.
what does AVAA mean?
Awesome Video As Always. It’s a saying in this guy’s comment sections
@@lukeyoung5709 thank you for the answer
This really says alot coming from the most die hard and non braindead Kanye defender (no insult intended)
AVAA. Professor Skye, I have been watching you for years now (since 2022) and I have never laughed so hard at something you said until you said you don’t “meat ride” you “observe meat” I almost shit my pants and had to change my underwear when I heard that.
I am also apart of the Youth that Ye wants to Influence & might I add that YOU influence me just as much as Ye does with your Analysis on Art. Much Love Professor Skye 💜
The Weeknd sang over Mach1ne G|_|n by Portishead on Belong to the World from his album, Kiss Land back in 2012.
avaa. been a huge kanye fan almost my whole life. through every controversy. i think we have to reconsider the way we speak about him. i really feel like since at least 2016 he’s been coasting. his work became self referential in a very modern and online way that was definitely thrilling in its early stages but has become tired at this point. the fact of the matter is he’s a relic of a different era of music. while he deserves respect for managing to stay on top as long as he has, a lot of that was through pure brute force, telling everyone about his genius for so long instead of showing it. he can still make very interesting creative choices just by the sheer power of his ego and personality but he’s no longer the leader of the culture in the way he maybe once was. and i do feel it diminishes some of his contemporaries, who are stably making great music late into their careers, to call him a genius so unequivocally and not award that moniker to others who have even influenced him. he’s gotten to a point where he in interviews is claiming credit for inspiring artists and movements that bear no resemblance to him (future and thug) he even started during the donda era really heavily leaning on the fact that he was born in atlanta to kind of tie himself to that area. when he was doing it at the time, it felt genuine for whatever reason. i was at the first donda event in atlanta. but now it all just feels so hollow.
AVAA Professor, was waiting for this, i hope you're having a great week, terrible album though, much love from India 🇮🇳.
I agree, this album has no direction or a story, but something tells me that it's the point of the album, he doesn't care about making music anymore, everything is being leaked, everything he drops is surrounded by controversy. and Ye never was the type to give the fans what they want. So I guess the direction of this album is that he doesn't care anymore?
I would say he did give the fans what they wanted this time, which is part of why the album sucks. Before he would do what he wanted to do, didn’t matter what fans wanted, it was about what he felt like creating. But adding 530 and sky city to the album is straight up fan service. Throwing those songs on V2 is like Star Wars bringing back Palpatine. Just doing what he thinks people will like rather than actually presenting new creative ideas.
you know that skye is playing with this tittle
Unless, the play is that I’m not playing…
@@professorskyeyou can give me a little shootout in the future if you will learn to appreciate this album after all the changes. much love
Hey ! Coming back a few weeks after the release of the vid + my initial comment, because I think I’ve had a small revelation about the theme of the album.
Kanye has previously mentioned feeling uncomfortable in regards to the explicit content of his songs, especially when considering his daughter and her education. In that context, I was really puzzled with the choice of 1) doing these albums, and more specifically 2) featuring his daughter in both of them.
My theory : part of the raison d’être of this project is to teach his daughter the dangerous nature of men and the temptations of fame and money. With those lenses, some of the creative decisions make more sense : who are the vultures ? Well, the men and women hovering around Ye and making money from his suffering ; but also, it could refer to Ye himself, who was never able to get rid of his porn addiction and commit to God. Instead of whitewashing his body of work with more unsincere christian albums - instead of trying to pass as a pious man - he decided to contextualize their explicit content -> he is, and has always been, a vulture, like most men. He is saying in effect : I know you look up to me, but know that I am a vulture -> be careful around men like me.
But she can also become a vulture : the « education » dispensed here also points towards vulturous women (esp in Vultures 2). In order for her to not turn out like them, she should marry a good man and escape the temptations of money and fame that corrupted them -> the song « husband » makes more sense in that context.
With that reading, there is a sense of Ye giving up on his dreams of redemption and pandering to his base instincts ; but, in doing so, trying to save the last pure thing in his life : his daughter - whom he’s previously compared to Donda, in regards to her heart and wisdom.
That doesn’t make the album much « better », it’s still trashy and messy. But it does make it more conceptually interesting + the new mixes makemore fun to listen to 👌
AVAA MY BOY
as an avid leak listener, the album was completely different than what was seemingly ready to release, it feels almost perfectly. I think My Soul made me cry though, the way TC sings about autism and depression.
*i did write this while walking down some of what i said doesn’t make any sense.
edit 2- I wanted to say, that apparently Ye has possibly developed an addiction to Nitrous oxide, since its come out that his dentist that gave him those stupid grills has possibly been supplying him with it.
this is definitely not the first one im afraid
I like the fixation on the process of creating that he's had since Donda (but going all the way back to pablo). The listening parties as Donda was being updated, the 24hr livestream where he's doing pushups & recording music in a concrete room. A lot of this album seems like that taken to the extreme. I mean 5:30 literally is a recording of him coming up with a verse just dumped onto the final album.
Not that having a concept automatically makes it good. 530 is at least a minute too long, Sky City is an absolute zombie of a track that should have gotten a full hurricane style re record. I think the run from Isabella ->Lifestyle is where this concept works the best, it starts with the skit, then goes to Husband which is this out of context unmixed verse over a soundscape, and then the two are put together in the context of a complete song in Lifestyle
edit: also AVAA
AVAA
This album felt like a reverse MBDTF
Instead of a comeback return to form cementing his legacy, it is the opposite: it cements that we are seeing a fall off and represents the first time kanye has ever sounded like he was running out of creativity
Every kanye album is very distinct and no matter what you think about it you cant deny there was at least some aspect of boldness and pushing boundaries to it, even donda 2 lol
But this is the first time it just feels like a re run of prior kanye ideas. There is nothing special about it sadly
Someone attempting to imitate kanye could have come up with this
After I listened to v2 I immediately checked for jpeg on production questioning what happened.
AVAA. I listened to this vultures 2 record in preparation for this video, and I have so many thoughts. I watched the first 10 minutes of this video, and now I know that I must stop now and type what I feel. Perhaps this video will touch on it. But I need to get my grief on paper. I need to get my pain into words.
This album, feels like Everywhere At The End of Time for Kanye. And I suspected that we would maybe get something more warped and depraved than Vultures 1 for Vultures 2, but I didn’t suspect anything like this...
I am a musician and producer, so I can explain to you exactly why everything feels so terrible and the highs aren’t there. Most of this record sounds scooped out, almost as if there’s a lowpass filter applied to everything except for one or two sounds. The balance of voice to instrumental is often off. It sounds unpolished, unfinished, muddy. Some samples are obnoxiously loud. A lot of the songs are repetitive. Others are criminally short. It feels like sabotage.
I wouldn’t recommend this album to anyone who is not already a producer. This is a deep look into the eaten away brain of Kanye right now. The brags are there, but they’re empty and soulless. He does tons of shocking things but they now have no sting. He is irrelevant, faded out and gray. It is a man trapped in loops, in circles, in endless pain. He can’t get out. He has no more passion. As I continued to listen to this record shutting down my producer brain from critiquing and just listened to it as it was, I fell into a rut. I felt lost. Hopeless. I think the tones and words are more important than the song progression itself. Much like poetry. I don't even think kanye knows who he is right now, and it reflects. He pulls from his past but nothing works there. He says things other rappers say, it doesn't work. He says things people say he says, it doesn't work. Religion? doesn't work. He has and is nothing. I know this feeling. This entire album is how I've felt before. This is true despair, without any of the beauty associated with the suffering.
This is a terrible album, make no mistake. But towards the end, I was almost hypnotized by how messed up it was. I expect Vultures 3 to be even more distorted and lost, perhaps happy to a fault, an insane drive off of a cliff. And it will fill me with even more terror than this record did. I could feel the direction even at Vultures 1, and now I am more sure of it.
River is one of my favorites on this album btw. it feels like a light in the dark and then it dissolves back into depraved lucidity at the end.
great comment and I agree. On my first listen i found it almost comically bad, but on repeated listens the true emptyness kanye feels right now becomes apparent even in the worst moments. The two worst moments on this album, husband and bomb, went from laughable to extremely heart wrenching; hearing kanye moan as his kids sing with passion that he no longer has. On husband Kanye repeats these mantras about marriage that he wants to believe because he feels so broken and alone after his marriage ended. He feels like a husk.
I'm visiting this album again, two new mixes in. It's a lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot better. WOW. I think prof is going to really like this. wow wow wow wow wow. so far every problem i've had has been fixed. there's still some rough spots but my word. mix and how long a song goes on makes so much of a difference
AVAA I completely agree with everything you said and as a very big Caravggio fan I really love that comparison
16:41 that mood switch was so good lol
AVAA
Have you tried listening to Vultures 1 and 2 interlaced? By interlaced I mean 1 song from each album. You'll find a story emerging. It's incomplete without Vultures 3, but you can get glimpses of it. I don't think it will change your opinion on the album, but as a fellow super-fan, you might enjoy it. The story that I can see emerging is that it's a Kim diss trilogy. I think the third album will make it more explicit.
Love your analysis. Love your videos. Sad you didn't like it. Glad that I love it.
Perfectly summed up the album for me and how I am feeling. Best reaction to V2 on YT
Just subscribed. Amazing video.
Thanks prof for the argument that we can’t tell if he is a good person, he is just an unwell person, I mean he is self aware he is fried
this feels like ye’s version of of dylan’s “self portrait” but if dylan sort of stumbled his way into it. hopefully there’s a “blood on the tracks” in kanye’s future, at this point i’m rooting for him just to be happy. he deserves it for how much he’s helped me
AVAA
AVAA
Professor, I really respect you for sharing your honest opinion about this record. Completely agree that it's lacking in vitality and heat, which is sad.
Also, we need your video on "The Rip"!
You clowning on the stale misogynist themes on this record killed me lol
I excused a lot of the same stuff on "V1" because there was often something really compelling going on musically (see "Back to Me"), but here it just feels so exhausted and tedious.
AVAA. Vultures 2 is just sad. Kanye has ofc been on a collision course with his own hubris for years now but he’s never made something that felt utterly devoid of purpose and feeling. I really don’t think he has a passion for music anymore. I’m sure it’s been waning for a while, but now that he’s blacklisted it’s the only thing he has to maintain his relevance. I wouldn’t be surprised if he resents his fans on some level because of this.
Also, Professor Skye, if you don’t mind me asking, what’s one tip you could give me to help with my French studies? I’m visiting in the Fall and I’m trying my best to not to bring more shame to America.
Prof, you put in a very admirable effort to give this a fair shot. I do think that if there's anything interesting to say here, it's about how misogyny may be the last refuge of the mentally ill man. Other than that, a complete snooze. AVAA!
AVAA, the machine gun sample on field trip blew my mind, but the weeknd actually did it first! it's on belong to the world, from kiss land.
Ye's a genius. He is also a deeply abrasive man who struggles with personal upkeep. I struggle to see what about him would be attractive if he didn’t have money. Like women only want him for money, true, but he doesn’t have anything else to offer.
the stare at the start horrifies me.
AVAA (DONT LIKE THIS COMMENT)
Rules are rules!
What/who is AVAA?
If you read the affidavit by Milo, regarding the nitrous abuse and all the ppl around Kanye just leaching off this unwell man, it really gives a whole new meaning to the name "Vultures".
Honestly feels like some kind of elaborate performance art at this point.
AVAA this review putting into words what i've been thinking, huge kanye fan and still am but this didn't move me at all. Still will probably go back and relisten especially as mixes change but as of now, this was just kind bad
The first time i haven't been moved by a Kanye album. 100% agree.
Professor Skye being a GAS goon is crazy
these analysis videos are so underrated
AVAA
Neil degrasse Tyson didn't really dunk on Terrance Howard. He responded to the paper that was given to him in the way in which he was asked to. Tyson gave Howard his flowers for having an inquisitive mind and was pretty respectful in my opinion. I'm legitimately curious what people think Tyson should have done.
The only ethical thing to do is ignore. But, I didn’t learn that until recently.
acaa @@professorskye
Even if Kanye fixes the production (which he is slowly doing, but I don't like that he has to do that at all), there are a bunch of fundamental issues with this thing that the production ain't gonna fix.
530 and Sky city were the nail in the coffin for me. 530 is literally a RUclips RIP of the leaks that we have and is LOWER QUALITY than the leaks that we have. Sky City has an AI VERSE but you said you dont want to talk about that 😅
Anyway as always AVAA!
It’s obviously not a good ALBUM, but there are a few tracks here I love & that I think I’ll have in rotation for quite a while…Slide, Time Moving Slow, Promotion, My Soul (assuming the mix ever gets fixed) are all really good tracks IMO.
At the end of the day, both Vultures volumes fell well short of expectations & the typical Kanye standard, but between the 2 I think there’s enough highs to create a solid playlist that is still better than most of what we will get from rap in 2024.
i didn't expect a leaky reference :D
Please can you re examine Vultures 1 - 2 i light of kanye being addicted ro nitros oxide
The album is improving with each daily update. Please revisit it once it's finished. This is basically TLOP 2, with how much it's being updated post-release and how significant the improvements are. the new river is probably ye's best song since donda era...i really think you'll enjoy it.
Do not compare this trash to tlop, this is nothing like it. there is not 1 song better than anything on tlop, other than maybe slide. the whole album is meaningless. he is not even on half the tracks, and when he is he doesn't make it better, hes not in the right state of mind, the laughing gas has rotted his brain.
@@shangis929idk gun to my head is next level
The album was finished when he released it
Who is Vultures 2 for? It’s for all of us -
With TLOP Kanye showed us an album getting iterated into a better more polished,more representative of the art vision sonic perspective, message and beat Kanye created. Everything before this was was polished and delivered to us DONE. Kanye let us in on some of the creative process through tlop- changing and leaking and evolving ever so slightly in front of us as we listened to it.
Vultures took it further and deeper into far darker,less comfortable, less likely to ultimately succeed and evolve into anything good part of his creative process. These songs are not only not done- they may not even be good enough to ever be done.
Vultures 1 still has some real bangers- ( it is Kanye after all) and I guarantee Vultures 2 will too- but he’s gonna make you confront the trash- the mutated fetuses that his cerebral womb must ultimately abort. The fact that this unsettling mess of goop gore slime and excessive noise and emotion- has sparkles of potential greatness shining through ESPECIALLY AFTER MULTIE FORCED LISTENINGS makes it all the more tragic. The emptiness isn’t tragic in and of itself- emptiness caused by a loss of a very real and imaginable potential that was either tragically stillborn myopically and surgically spliced out to complete the art of bringing about a real tragedy as a piece of music/art.
Kanye intentionally or not is manifesting success through failure- and showcasing failure and the lack complete and asking the question “are they the same?” As an artist, a genius, one of which great art is expected, CAN Kanye fail in a way other than just giving up and not finishing the thing yet? Can Kanye fail after putting in the totality of his genius,his efforts, calling in all his favors, bringing in all the greatest artists to contribute, drawing upon the most compelling of muses and influences- and ultimately examining this overdetermined social totality and its infinite strings of potential hurt, alienation, oppression, appropriation and violently disallowing any human space allowing actual human freedom.
Kanye used to use his music to tear open that prison that is Adorno’s overdetermined totality and make some spaces of true freedom or at least unearth and shine some light on the ones that had been appropriated into silence or didn’t have a loud enough voice or bright enough light to show themselves previously.
Kanye has always been able to make the absurd profound- without changing any definitions of the thing mutating. David Stern CAN be the third most important person in the African-American story even though everyone laughed at its sillyness initially then thought about it and realized its wit..then some of us either without the blinders of white privelage or trying diligently to see around them- realized a deeper truth. Under stern’s 80-90s nba- America including black little boys- saw people who looked like their Dads and uncles and neighbors acting like modern day superhero’s. Exhibiting strength and dominance- not only was the nba predominantly black, but with players like Allen Iverson- they didn’t even need to sound like white folks to be successful, respected, and heroic. Most of all little black boys for the first time in American History had examples nee PROOF that black folks could grow up to be rich as fuck. David Stern made sure everyone saw it, knew it, and worked to bring the NBA and its predominantly black predominantly urban predominantly working class player base onto tvs around the world- making basketball the second most popular sport by about the largest margin possible. In huge markets like China it stomps soccer- it has pro leagues in over 45 countries and most teams allowed one or two foreign players- have an African-American as their star player.
Sorry for the digression. That’s just an example of a random absurd Kanye quote, lyric, beat or other utterance getting developed towards something that allows for the complexity, and he brilliance, the artistic and the profound to be unraveled and presented.
If Kanye leaves Vultures 1 and 2 alone- and we as listeners and critics aren’t able to hear the greatness in these songs-Kanye has proven to us he is on no decline. We NEED him to develop and pull on those strings. He needs to produce and iterate and reiterate in order to create truly complete great works of art. If vultures 1 and 2 don’t become that- I feel that even if Kanye didn’t give us the easy way out by finishing it- as fans, listeners, critics, djs, dancers, radio listeners, and/or Kanye fans we can do it ourselves. Listen to it enough you’ll find your jam. Pump up the base and mix it with a new Kendrick verse, turn that shit up. Damn even carnival makes violent neo fascist skomhead hooligans happy and excited to sing in unison about riding a black man’s penis like a carnival horse. And if that ain’t something new and great- what is? If Diddy and Meek proved you can still be masculine, hood as hell, and a masculine black man - while engaging in sexual intercourse with a person of similar description- carnival showed an African American can appropriate a European white skinhead mob mentality’s brotherhood of violence against anything or anyone that’s not them-into an anthem celebrating and supporting the sexual prowess of African American men. Pretty sure neither example is racist- nor homophobic. But pretty sure no one would have any issue calling both pretty damn gay. And the dialectic absurdity and genius of Kanye West marches onward and as always I’m full form.
To all my south side n1??as who know me best, maybe me and Taylor might still have sex”.
If a Milan ultra can chant about riding Ty dolla$ign’s member for a prolonged period of time and with a mix of enjoyment and skill- who is to say stranger things have not happened?
Don’t worry about Ye. He’ll continue to be the centuries most important artist and we don’t need to like or “get” everything. Although I’m
Sure it frustrates the shit out of him!
Craig
AVAA one of the most damning critics I’ve seen of Vultures 2 has been from fans of the albums saying peoples expectations are to high. Like man… you really said it all, I expect a lot from this man and this ain’t it.
When I listened to Vultures 1, the album felt like a burnout. Ye sounds tired yet constantly changing his mood trying to cope with the crisis he's going through.
So Vultures 2 to me is what comes after burnout - indifference. Ye doesn't care about anything at all. His daughters want to record something? Go ahead. Fans want unreleased tracks to be on DSPs? Change the mix and put it on the record. Can't record your verse? Put AI as the first verse on Sky City of all songs.
Vultures 3 better be a Putin album.
Interesting. That begs the question though. What will Vultures 3 be like you think?
@@XenaticLuxobest case scenario is Vultures 3 is getting his crap together and setting his life back on track but there's a high chance V3 is gonna be either unreleased or transformed into different project, maybe a ¥$ album that's not a part Vultures series if not a solo project.
Avaa!
You know it’s real when he brings out the Kanyevaggio parallel
Yeah u gonna have to revisit this
AVAA Professor Skye, I’d love to see a video on how you analyze and study Kanye’s albums; your process. No pressure or anyth, just would really interest me personally
the video didn't dropped, but the answer is no.
this is like the fourth bad kanye album
I'd say 3rd personally
@@jay4.166for me it's yeezus, jesus is king, and both vultures (still haven't heard donda 2 tho so it could be bad)
what albums you think are bad?
@@ManuelaAlmeidaRamos I'd say all the ones you listed minus yeezus. It has too many memorable moments to me for it to be bad imo.
@@jay4.166 ww2 had some memorable moments too, but it doesn't make it a good thing
@@ManuelaAlmeidaRamos damn, you went in with that one.
When Fantano refuses to talk about Kanye anymore.
Considering HOOD RAT a good song might be the most objectable thing you’ve said 😭 respect for having ur own opinion tho
Tbh a lot of what you said about this album I already felt about Vultures 1. The first one didn't have any meaning anyway, there was no priority or focus on lyrical or thematic substance on thet record anyway and just Ye letting the features and Ty Dolla carry every track in terms of quality, Vultures 2 is just another validation of my thought that Kanye puts literally no effort artistically into his music anymore.
Haven’t watched yet but Kanye on purpose make it as bad as possible. He released inferior versions of leaked songs and even ripped some straight from youtube rather than using the files he already had. Its like he gave up a good while ago and told everyone else working on v2 to just release whatever as fast as possible.
Lol why? He had since April to release it. Why would he suddenly need to rush it now?
@@blunteastwoodI think it’s because they genuinely want to drop all 3 this year, but it’s already August and they’re running out of time so they just threw this one out there as is. I would expect vultures 3 in December and it’ll probably be similar quality.
Yep, sky city literally has better versions that been leaking since 2018. It's wild how he keeps ruining and releasing these tracks.
AVAA
I'm personally mixed on it, especially given the new info about kanyes addiction, it almost gives this whatever lazy album a darker edge. In a way I guess it feels like I'm also running on laughing gas and bad coping. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Fried is pretty good
I hope ye is OK
Didn't really expect to get an art history lesson, but I won't complain
Personally sky city is something ive been waiting on for a while and hearing on this album brought me to tears definitely out of place but its beautiful and the best ty vocal on v1 or v2 the ai think is very interesting especially the context of the the after life because they can use his voice forever making songs with Ye
AVAA Theres other bad ones but this might be the worst, at least until they fix it up, but even if they fix the mixing, there's not a lot there worth saving imo.
HOLY SHIT! FOOD LION MENTIONED!
Its weird that you dont really care about mixing? I think its a very important part of what makes those brave moments actually sound good
I hear you. I think it's more so that the mixing gets across the idea. It doesn't have to sound perfect. As long as the mix doesn't get in the way of the song
"i don't like dobby" had me cackling lol
24:30 This sequence is so funny
AVAA great video as usual, and I'm glad we can both agree that this album definitely exists 👍
I felt so proud of myself for immediately catching the Machine Gun sample lol.
I think Field Trip is better, catchier than you describe but you’re otherwise on target.
Ever since Pablo, I can’t expect an ALBUM I love, I can only expect a few great songs inside of highly inconsistent albums.
But this man gave us MBDTF and Yeezus so he retains the right to fall apart personally and artistically.
One weird thing I found about 530 is the fact that it sounds like Kanye is saying “you gotta do wrong in order to do you reich” , I don’t know if this is another hidden neonazi reference or it’s just a byproduct of his pronunciation
I feel like v3 will be better if they decide to put it out. But chances are it won’t be until next year if at all.
I’m firmly on team “washed since TLOP” but it’s always interesting to hear the perspective of a diehard Ye fan on his more controversial new music. AVAA
It wasn’t a matter of if Kanye would become washed; it was only a matter of when.
Kanye’s had like five bad albums, ever since he lost focus after “YE” he’s been on a downward spiral, and I really loved a lot of donda but that album was so bloated it can barely be considered a great “album” maybe a good collection of songs for the most part but if you’re gonna listen to a Kanye album it’s gotta be a well manicured tracklist with minimal filler and he hasn’t given us that since 2018
I hated vultures 1. Every single track. I haven't listened to the entirety of vultures 2, but I do quite like a couple of tracks. Dead is excellent imo. Lifestyle (leak version, not the new one) is good too. Wish kanye did more like these. The rest of the tracks seem meh, sure, but it's weird how everyone instantly hate this album
respect the takes, but I do feel like the real problem with Vultures 2 is the mixing and polish. If it was polished and finished...is it really worse than V1? I think it could feasibly be better than that album, or at least a noticeable progression that could fit within this three-album scope that they are trying to do. maybe just me. it's obviously a failure at this point, but even on Ty's performances alone there is so much potential here
AVAA we need that Portishead Third album video!
You put it into words better than I can
I feel EXACTLY like you, I didn’t disagree with you once. Which is rare in these videos
AVAA
Professor - listen to the updated version of River that they just released this morning (can hear it on RUclips music & the single version (not full album version yet) on Spotify). It’s absolutely beautiful.
AVAA I would love an analysis on the rip, one of my favorite songs of all time
I get most of what he says, even when i disagree i can see his point, Skye really strikes me as a intellectual version of los pollos but for kanye, im on the side that kanye has many mid to bad albums, JIK and Vultures 1 are one of those. This album strikes me as a new low for him and seeing this makes me happy because it only can go up from now!
right? It can't get worse right? Right!??
Hard to be an optimist in times like these
47:50 onwards. FACTS
I listened to Vultures 2 on Spotify while driving into work last night... I like the album. I wonder if the Spotify version is updated?
I keep hearing comparisons between Gambino and Kanye, even in this review. Tbh I’ve never liked his music, but maybe I’ll try his new album
Very much agree that the album just feels empty. Part of that for me is that there really is nothing to the Vultures Era. The months around an album for me really color the album. It’s about the ideas and emotions that Kanye is putting out around the album. This album feels to have no real ideas
Today i saw prof skye's vein almost burst with anger
AVAA perhaps artists are allowed to make trash without being labeled ‘washed’. Perhaps it’s the hopeful side of me, but what if he knows it was necessary for him to make a bad empty album. Do the opposite, go against what people expect of you, inversion tactics. Maybe I’m giving him too much credit, but that’s what a genius would do imo.
this is the final boss of kanye stans jc
It's the easiest of his to ignore sadly
AVAA
its interesting that you mentioned valuators 1 as the story of a divorced man in this one he sounds like on many instances he is talking about his current marriage providing 2 opposing views one of which is the hedonistic almost abusive comments about her wife fallowed up by misogynistic views on how she only is there for the mony and that she doesn’t have anything to provide other than her body and the other is about the emotional connection and the love he has for her. in the latter part of this album some songs like dead or 530 the duality and struggles become more evident.
i do believe that a narrative is being told but i totally agree that the over all package seems lazy and all over the place in some parts.
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