It wouldn’t be an unpopular opinion if I said that Kanye West is the most influential rapper of this generation who changed the way people look at hip hop and rap music forever. Kanye started his career with a trilogy of classic albums like College Dropout (2004), Late Registration (2005), and the fan-favorite Graduation (2007).
His victory in the 2007 sales battle was against 50 Cent, for his album Curtis, which sold 691k copies in the first week whereas Graduation sold a whopping 957k first week, this moment is popularly known as the death of gangsta rap and a new era of hip hop started from this album. But, after years of giving critically acclaimed projects, Kanye has been on a downward spiral since the beginning of this decade with disappointing projects back to back. His 2021 album Donda was indeed a great listening experience and Kanye had organized huge and grand events for that album but still did not match up to the expectations his fans had from him.
People were still looking forward to what’s next from him, after his infamous controversy regarding anti-Semitism and problematic opinions, he disappeared for a year and returned with a trilogy announcement in collaboration with Ty Dolla Sign called Vultures. Vultures 1 dropped back in February this year and personally I enjoyed the album, it was far from perfect but had its own great moments and even spawned the hit single Carnival featuring Playboi Carti, but critics despised it and people on the internet absolutely trashed the project. I still anticipated Vultures 2 even after seeing a new Kanye hate wave on X, and oh boy do I regret it! Vultures 2 was released on 3rd August this year and even after months of listening parties and snippets of the album, it was incomplete and few songs on it weren’t even sound-engineered at all!
It was disappointing for everyone including me that Kanye and Ty Dolla Sign dropped an incomplete album with half-baked songs that lacked passion and updated the songs throughout the month which still didn’t live up to the mark. In my opinion, Kanye West needs a long break from music as his recent work sounds like he’s just making music to fit in among the young ones and still be relevant, and completely reinvent himself with innovative sounds as we all know him.
Comment down what you think about Kanye’s recent albums and what’s your opinion about his career at this point?
