For the past two decades, millions of people around the world have been blessed by the lyrical genius named Kanye West. From “The College Dropout” to “Yeezus,” Kanye’s incredible music has been consistently popular, with every new album immediately collecting millions of listens upon release. Kanye uses these albums, and their performances in person, to communicate to his fans (and haters). In fact, Kanye’s new album, “VULTURES 1,” commonly referred to as “Vultures,” was used as a stage for Kanye to address the recent controversies related to his anti-semitic remarks. And although this example may seem like a new occurrence, Kanye has been telling stories about his life for years through his music.

Nearly every popular musical artist has done a tour of their music. Taylor Swift is actively doing her Eras Tour, Kendrick Lamar has done his The Big Steppers Tour, and Kanye has done the highest-grossing Hip-Hop tour of all time, the Yeezus tour. The tour gathered $95 million, rightfully earning the number one spot. While Kanye interacted with fans a lot during the Yeezus tour, there are two examples of very popular songs that enable people to learn about Kanye, instead of just his music. 

Kanye West released his first album in February of 2004. He titled this album “The College Dropout,” and on this album was the song “Through the Wire.” The song details Kanye’s uprising, with a main lyric being: “I turned tragedy to triumph, make music that’s fire, spit my soul through the wire.” This is a reference to the fact that at the time Kanye was writing the song, he was recovering from serious injuries caused by a car crash. Pushing through his situation, Kanye produced the song despite having his mouth wired shut. On the same album, the song “School Spirit” touches on that by adding: “Crack my head on the steering wheel and I ain’t even dead.”

But these lyrics are not Kanye recapping his life, rather his upbringing. However, in “VULTURES 1,” this is not the case. For the advertising song, titled “Vultures,” Kanye directly addresses the controversy of him being anti-semetic. In the past few years, Kanye has been guilty of making many anti-semetic remarks, which produced a surge of anti-semitism in America. He has tried to push back against many of these allegations, with one method being testifying in “Vultures.” Two minutes and two seconds into the song, Kanye drops the lyric: “I ain’t anti-semetic I just f*cked a Jewish b*tch.”  This line immediately sparked criticism, as many people believed the line lacked seriousness, and was Kanye trying to shove this issue under the rug, and this unseriousness proved anti-semitism. Others are glad that Kanye is pushing back against these allegations, and hope that this is just the first step in the right direction. 

Kanye’s very controversial life is far from over, walking hand in hand with his music career. Hopefully the next two “VULTURES” releases will bring more news, but until then, listen to “Carnival.”