Ye’s Fix-as-You-Go Approach is Officially Broken

If you're reading this, it’s too late to rescue Vultures 2. But that doesn’t mean Ye won’t give it a shot.

Ty Dolla $ign and Kanye West (together known as ¥$) released their second collaborative album of the year last week, with a notice on the YZY website stating: “Updated songs will be published in real time.” So far, these updates have included changes to song titles, tweaks to the production, and shortened tracks. For all we know, Ye could be adjusting stem files at this very moment, getting ready to roll out another batch of changes, much like his late idol Steve Jobs would with iOS updates. Art has perhaps never felt so commodified.

This has been the Yeezy method for a long time: release music, then tweak it repeatedly until it meets his creative standards. That said, the rollout of Vultures 2 has been chaotic, even by Ye’s usual standards. This 16-track project (plus five additional songs in the deluxe edition released after the initial drop) sounds particularly unfocused and unfinished—an unfortunate outcome for the fix-it-as-you-go approach to modern music production. Ye’s perfectionism has never seemed so counterproductive. Vultures 2 is evidence that his erratic system has finally hit a wall.

It’s unclear why Ye, who seems to be the main driving force despite the album’s collaborative billing, insists on this way of working. It’s an interesting experiment, sure, but the result is clear: This isn’t working. The unconventional process has already led to some of the harshest reviews in Kanye’s discography. YouTube comments on the original version of “Time Moving Slow” are filled with complaints about the updated version being inferior. (One commenter on the original version of “River” received hundreds of likes for saying, “The whole vultures era has been about creating the best music you’ve ever heard and then ruining it.”) And the version of Vultures 2 available on streaming platforms still feels glaringly unpolished. It raises the question: Who is this really benefiting?

It wasn’t always like this. Kanye West’s early career highlights the benefits of his obsessive nature. From his 2004 debut, The College Dropout, to 2013’s *Yeezus*, every element, from the kick drums to the background vocals, felt meticulously crafted. He famously claimed to have recorded a “perfect” album with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and his earlier albums are generally considered ambitious, if not flawless, works of art.

Even in those early days, though, Ye would rework songs that had already become fan favorites. Five years after releasing the Get Well Soon... mixtape track “Home” in 2002, Kanye swapped out the excellent John Legend hook and soulful beat for Chris Martin singing over a sleek piano arrangement on Graduation’s “Homecoming.” Replacing an uncleared Lauryn Hill sample on “All Falls Down” was a necessary, if effective, reworking of an early classic. But Ye became more open about his process with “Love Lockdown” in 2008. In response to lukewarm feedback, he updated the lead single from 808s & Heartbreak before the album’s release. “There's a new version of ‘Love Lockdown’ coming,” Kanye wrote on his now-defunct blog, explaining that he’d replaced the drums and re-recorded the vocals. “Your prayers have been answered!”

Kanye fully embraced this build-as-you-go approach with 2016’s The Life of Pablo, a messy launch that he described as “a living, breathing, changing creative expression.” As a result, “Wolves” got a post-release makeover, with Ye adding features from Sia and Vic Mensa and moving Frank Ocean’s cameo to its own interlude. (Ye’s “Ima fix wolves” tweet quickly became a meme, though not everyone was happy with the changes.) More than half of the album’s songs were revised after its release. He made similar adjustments on Ye a couple of years later.

In 2020, Pigeons & Planes praised the tech- and design-inspired recording process that created TLOP, suggesting it could be both a creative and business advantage if others followed Ye’s lead. But his approach has since felt more like a crutch than a boundary-pushing innovation. Donda (2021) and its sequel released the following year arrived particularly disorganized and incomplete. There was, however, a redeeming quality to those albums, as they were released alongside Kanye’s Stem Player, a now-discontinued device that allowed fans to deconstruct and remix the songs—a forward-thinking idea.

Vultures 2, however, feels like a rushed homework assignment. Oddly enough, it seems Ye imposed this deadline on himself. Parts of the album seem to retain AI filters (“Sky City,” “Field Trip”) that make human voices sound unnatural. Some songs are clearly unmixed (“My Soul”). “Lifestyle” features a repeated Ye verse that also appears on “Husband” (it was trimmed in the album’s censored version released on Thursday, but remains in the explicit version). First impressions matter. The album debuted in a rough state and has only marginally improved since.

Giving Ye the benefit of the doubt (though he’s exhausted most of it), he might genuinely believe that it’s a gift for listeners to see a musical genius at work. Maybe he thinks he’s elevating the art of music creation by revealing the process, flaws and all. The reality, however, is that it’s only damaging his reputation as a meticulous creator. In this case, watching the process is almost as unpleasant as the cliché itself.

Ye was once the gold standard for albums of the highest quality—he aimed to create art that propelled music into the future. In contrast, the biggest flaw of experiencing Vultures 2 and its ongoing updates is that it’s hard to tell which artistic decisions are intentional, which are mistakes, and what’s just being cleaned up to appease fans who will likely remain divided no matter what changes are made. The artistic message loses its impact. What’s innovative about that?

Vultures 2 isn’t entirely bad: Future helps elevate “Promotion,” while the raw energy of “Field Trip” is palpable. But the bitter rant “530” squanders its potential with bouts of incoherent mumbling. Is this gibberish meant to mimic drunken rambling, or is it just a placeholder that might be replaced in the future? We may never know.