“The College Dropout,” “Graduation” and “Donda” are just a few of the best known albums by Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.
West, although controversial, is one of the most successful and listened-to artists of the time. With 62.24 million listeners per month, he is ranked 23rd for most monthly listeners as of January 2024 on Spotify. West announced that his new album, “Vultures,” would be released in December after stating that he had been working on it throughout all of 2023. Originally set to come out in mid-December, the album was pushed to December 31, 2023. When this date approached, the album was moved again, said to be released on January 12, 2024, then he changed it to January 19, 2024. It was actually released on February 9. Ye announced this new date after surprising fans by announcing he may not release the album at all.
Ye has pushed back this album so many times that many fans believed he would never release it. This would have been a tremendous issue since numerous successful artists are featured on this album, including Ty Dolla $ign and Nicki Minaj.
Minaj was asked to feature her song “New Body,” which was originally slated to be released in 2018. However, she ultimately declined, explaining that the song was already too old and that she wanted to move on with her career, especially with her successful album coming out.
Before February 9, Ye already released the controversial main song “Vultures,” in which he once again mentions the Jewish community. Though he put out an apology about this incident, he has yet to be largely forgiven. Many people believe this is why he kept pushing the album: to give people time to recover. Ye also confirmed that a reason his album was late to come out is because several samples used in the album were not approved yet. For example, he uses the iconic song “Everybody” by The Backstreet Boys in one of the songs on “Vultures.”
This album was highly anticipated for many reasons. For example, it’s his first album since he was officially “canceled” for being anti-semitic. It’s also his first album since his divorce with Kim Kardashian. People were also very excited because Ye released a snippet of one of his songs that featured his 10-year-old daughter, North West.
This album, although controversial, could emerge as one of the most influential albums of 2024.
