Albums Just Don’t Fall Out of the Sky, You Know?

The Best from K. West Part One
J. K. Tang

A LEGACY SPANNING TWO DECADES awakens to stir up our streaming charts in a jaw-dropping fashion. This long awaited collaborative special with 24-time Grammy Award winning Hip-Hop maestro, Kanye “Ye” West and rapper/songwriter visionary Ty Dolla $ign, skyrockets to the No. 1 spot on global music charts (as per Billboard). Once more, Ye’s symphonic blend of experimental lyricism, miscellaneous sound samples and head-bobbing instrumentals has us wondering how this super-duo can top themselves in the two remaining chapters of the ‘Vultures’ album trilogy. As we put our wonder to halt, let’s dive into the best of Ye’s latest release. 

STARS: As ‘we finna go where the stars at’, Dijion’s heavenly vocals—from his song, Good Luck—drifts us into the unworldly heights of West’s discography. The celestial uplift of choir chords and martial drums lays a steady path for his other transcendentalist tracks. 

KEYS TO MY LIFE: With a distorted sample of Brand Nubian’s Slow Down, Ye begins his lyrical journey wearing an introspective lens. The rapper pays homage to his late mother and life in Chi-town (Chicago), bringing the same existentialist depth found in Homecoming from his third album, Graduation. Reverse samples and fast hi-hats reminiscent of his fifth album, Life of Pablo. 

BACK TO ME: One of the standout tracks on this album. One of the original songs to be fully leaked. A cinematic sample from Dogma blossoms into a melodic symphony of colourful drums and distorting vocals. This melodic dynamism between Ye and Ty pushes this track to andante moderato and guides the consistency of this tempo with allusion to the story of Icarus. In the second half of this song, Freddie Gibbs delivers an unparalleled verse that critiques our contemporary images of status and wealth through the eyes of Karl Marx. As he provokes our socio-political systems, the ongoing flow of Marxist criticism funnels into the line, “She cryin’ tears in that Maybach and not the Toyota’  —the emphasis of the bourgeoisie’s tendencies to victimhood—. 

BURN: Where Ye’s catchiness and controversy meet, the sublime track, BURN, exposes how ‘love is dangerous’ in a world ‘entertained by [his] pain’. After copious amounts of backlash, Mr West finds himself both estranged and amongst the populous. Evidently, his verse, ‘Who ain’t cash a check off my name?’, questions society’s capitalist attitudes towards music stardom. In this questioning, this pop-like ballad reveals the rapper’s ability to find calm in the chaos and harmonise it into a beautiful catastrophe. 

CARNIVAL: Can a listener be in the audience? The combination of star-studded features and the stadium-shaking vocals of Inter Milan ultras opens Ye’s concerts into an entirely new atmosphere. Each rhythmic chant layers the lyricism of Playboi Carti and Rich the Kid into a quaking allegro pace. Humbling the pace with his nostalgic hand, the sample-god surgically implants subtle electric guitar riffs from Hell of a Life on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. This Travis Scott-esque track diversifies the genre-breaking masterpiece of an album and emulates West’s timeless response to an ever-changing industry.

This album has its outstanding highs and underwhelming lows. However, as average music-goers, we will continuously try to find our own calm in Ye’s chaos. Credits to Will M J for his insight into Vultures 1.