The exhausting show continues on VULTURES 2, which seems to exist because the powers that be just don’t want Ye to win, man. This is the whole album’s shtick: I survived cancel culture, a conspiracy that Ye’s noxious, neverending presence in the spotlight disproves. The sneering sentiment underscores the album’s steadfast lack of purpose. Though the beats are loud and lush, and though guests like Lil Wayne, Lil Durk, and Don Toliver swing through with energized performances, there’s no vision or direction connecting all the moving parts. “Dead” clumsily swings from pounding drums and an energized Future verse to stilted and stupid Ye lines. “Twenty the new 30, but you’re still 30,” the 47-year-old raps. “River” opens with spry and funny Young Thug flexes (“Like a dirty butt, I’m having cheese”) then devolves into vague prayers from Ye. “Too much hate and not enough love/Free Larry, free Young Thug,” he croons mechanically.
Elsewhere, he squanders the anguished R&B loop of the “Marvins Room” ripoff “530,” stumbling through the last and obviously unfinished verse with, you guessed it, some scoop-diddy-whoops. It feels telling that the misogynistic insults are the clearest lines: “Don’t sa-fah-na-da, I’m new with this/Da-da, na-dana, goi’ through with this/Pa-da-la, fa-na-dan, don’t think this/Can’t fa-fa-na-da for you fake bitch/You don’t really love Ye, go listen to Drake, bitch.” Male grievance and virility are the only things holding Ye and Ty Dolla’s partnership together.
VULTURES 2 is even shoddier in construction and execution than its predecessor. This is frat rap for bitter baby daddies and aspiring trad husbands—kings, I guess. Andrew Tate probably loves it. I’m not sure how anybody else could. No adrenaline, dopamine, or blood courses through this carrion of an album. Despite the frequent overtures to grandeur, spectacle, and machismo, these songs are limp and flabby. No one seems to have wondered why someone would want to play these songs beyond the names attached to them, or attempted to make them more than sonic merch. Ye must really miss the Gap.
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