Kanye West drops first song since Antisemitic meltdowns. Hit or flop?

Once celebrated rapper, now controversy magnet Kanye “Ye” West has returned with a new song, ‘Vultures’, featuring Ty Dolla $ign, Lil Durk and Bump J.

It marks his first new song since a raft of antisemitism allegations last year.

For those of you who need a refresher, accusations of antisemitism were levelled against West after he said that he would go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” in October 2022.

He went on to garner criticism for wearing a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt at Paris Fashion Week, and had a memorable appearance on Alex Jones’ Infowars talk show, in which he seemed to praise Hitler.

An ex-staffer at TMZ also claimed that the rapper once praised “Hitler and the Nazis” during an interview and, more recently, it was alleged that West drew a swastika in a meeting with Adidas about his Yeezy footwear line.

As an extra depressing accolade, West was also labelled the ‘Antisemite of the Year’ by watchdog group StopAntisemitism.

You are now all caught up.

So, is ‘Vultures’ a welcome reminder that West used to be a very talented rapper and is now putting the right-wing wooing behind him, moving on with hopefully a modicum of shame and understanding that he should keep his hate speech to himself, and finally focusing on the music once more?

No, he’s released one of 2023’s most soporific and eye-rollingly terrible songs, in which he appears to double down on his previous sentiments.

Indeed, West directly addresses the accusations, before dropping the line: “How am I antisemitic? / I just fucked a Jewish bitch.”

Charming.

The controversy-stirring line joins other mind-numbingly stupid lyrics:

“Big-ass toaster, hit you with it, flip it over.”

That’s not how you make toast.

“I don’t know who I fucked last night / I got Alzheimer’s.”

Poor.

“I just fucked Scooter’s bitch and we ran up like Olympics.”

A crushingly subtle reference to his former manager Scooter Braun.

“This ain’t Columbine / But we came in with the trenches.”

Oh sure, namecheck the Columbine shooting to ensure listeners need to inject bleach into their ears to somehow cleanse their auditory canals from the garbage they just endured.

Musically speaking, it sounds as if they’ve all downed some NyQuil (other sleep-inducing syrups are available) and are attempting to rap with little-to-no verve to speak of.

If you’re morbidly curious or want your ears molested, here’s the song:

‘Vultures’ debuted on the radio station WPWX Power 92 Chicago, and there is no word of an official release date or whether the track will appear on West and Ty’s forthcoming joint album – which Ty recently said was set to arrive “real soon”.

While many are holding out hope that West might turn a leaf and return to his glory days, any hankerings regarding the rapper now border on all-out delusion.

As for die-hard fans, defend him all you want. However, you’re the ones stuck defending hateful behaviour from a petulant man-child. On top of being lumped with music that not only objectively pales with his 2004 – 2018 output (2018’s collab album with Kid Cudi, ‘Kids See Ghosts’ is strong and the only reason that date didn’t stop at 2016 with the very frustrating but listenable ‘The Life of Pablo’), but is strenuously terrible.