Kanye West, also known as “Ye,” in 2022, has thrown himself into a huge heap of controversy with his anti-Semitic remarks on Twitter and Alex Jones’ show “Infowars.” Ye had seemingly dug a pit for himself that he would never be able to climb out of, either shutting down his social media accounts or being banned from them, as well as losing his “Yeezy” collaboration with Adidas. Many people believed that Ye was done with music, and wanted to never have a presence again. That was, until, he suddenly reactivated his Instagram account, and was unbanned from Twitter.
For a while after being unbanned, he stayed silent. Although he was silent on social media, he was not living a secluded life. He was spotted multiple times in Dubai nightclubs, strangely enough, playing unreleased music. This seemed to show that he might be working on a comeback album. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, he dropped a single, entitled Vultures.
Vultures, which many enjoyed, was supposed to feature Lil Durk, Ty Dolla $ign & Pump J, however, it was released without a Lil Durk verse. Many keen-eyed Ye fans were able to put together all of the puzzle pieces, news stories, and Instagram stories, figuring out the album was entitled “Vultures” and was a collab album between Ye and Ty (¥$).
Many were confused about this choice, as Ty only had a few songs with Ye before, and wondered why he would purposely throw himself into controversy.
While it was a good song according to the general public, and Ty seemed to be mostly innocent in the scandal, the song, while addressing the controversy, did it horribly. In the song, Ye raps “How am I anti-semitic, I just f**ked a Jewish B**ch”, which led many to be even angrier at Kanye than they already were. It seemed that Ye thought he would be able to just come back, and everybody would just let him. However, after realizing that he most likely would fail without apologizing in some sort of way, he returned to Twitter.
Ye’s first post back on Twitter on December 13th didn’t address the controversy at all, however, it announced that a new member was joining the Yeezy team. This showed that while the collaboration with Adidas had been dropped, Ye was not done with Yeezy. Then, two days later, on the 15th, Ye announced the “YZY PODS”, which were his first footwear since “Liberation from Adidas.” Still, though, Ye didn’t address the controversy. That was, until the 26th, when Ye released an apology, all in Hebrew. In short, the apology said, “I realize that I should not take hate against one or two people and project it onto an entire race.” As well as “I deeply regret any pain I may have caused to any people.” While the apology began to make some people forgive him, with the verse on the single he released, many still felt as if he had not done anything to make amends with the Jewish community.
Simultaneously, Ye began posting on his Instagram. However, on his Instagram, he aired the same apology, also in Hebrew. But, after around a month, he deleted the image from his Instagram account for no apparent reason. Many viewed this as him attempting to make people forget about the controversy, while still having an apology out. Again, Ye had barely done anything to refute his status as anti-Semitic.
Even though he didn’t fully restore his reputation, he still carried on. After a couple of stories and posts teasing the album, he finally dropped the release date for the album. However, there were 3 albums, all different versions of Vultures, all featuring Ty Dolla $ign. The closest album was February 9th, followed by March 8th, and April 5th.
The album was released on Apple Music, iTunes, and Tidal early in the morning of February 10th, confusingly not releasing on Spotify for most of the same day, irritating a lot of people. The album itself featured a lot of samples, one of them being Donna Summer’s song “I Feel Love.” However, the sample was entirely uncleared, leading to the song being removed the following Wednesday. The album was mostly good, with some standouts being Carnival (Feat. Playboi Carti, Rich The Kid), Burn, and Problematic. However, for many, even if the album was good, it didn’t excuse some of the lyrics on the album, such as the lyric “Crazy, Bipolar, Anti-semite, and I’m Still the King.” Many viewed this album as “Unreviewable,” such as the controversial music critic, Anthony Fantano.
Freshmen Thomas Argroves had a mixed reaction to the album, saying, “While the album was amazing in my opinion, I feel like Kanye didn’t address anything, which made listening to the album sort of awkward.”
In music critic, Anthony Fantano’s YouTube video on the album, he stated that due to Ye’s remarks, the album was completely unreviewable, because no matter how good the album may sound, he still said horrible things, and showed clear hatred towards jewish people. Many people agreed with this opinion, but many also disagreed, saying that he had done enough, and he had changed. However, with Ye only referencing the controversy a couple of times publicly (most of them being negative), many believe that he may never come back to the peak of how he used to be.
While the run for vultures isn’t finished, it seems as if Ye has already set his opinion in stone, and showed he won’t be changing it anytime soon. Hopefully, Ye will address the controversy more soon, or in the other albums.
