Kanye West apparently can’t go more than 48 hours without controversy. The rapper has already been criticized for the chaotic rollout of VULTURE 2. A rollout that took months and involved multiple album versions in the making, mind you. Then it was suggested that West was addicted to laughing gas, a story that effectively drowned out everything else that was on the album. VULTURE 2. Despite the seemingly constant barrage of problems, Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign are moving on. The duo has decided to release a music video for the first time. VULTURE 2 Released single: “SLIDE”.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign do not appear in the video for “SLIDE.” There is no performance element in the song, nor are there famous faces everywhere. Instead, the video features a single, unbroken shot of a camera panning down a city street. We see a woman in her underwear, we see homeless people in tents. At one point we also see a vulture, but why not? It is implied that the street in question is in a red-light district, but other aspects of the video, like burning cars, don’t really fit that theory. Overall, it feels very far removed from the concept of “No Church In the Wild,” which is societal chaos.
It’s a cool video, even if it doesn’t match the lyrics of Kanye West or Ty Dolla Sign. In “SLIDE,” West raps about impossibly rich partying and sexual conquests in the first verse. “On the way to the high rise. Cruisin’ like eyes wide shut (Stand up),” he spits. But I slide in like a drive-by. The industry don’t like me, tell ’em they wimpy n**gas too (Stand up). They tried to hit me with cyanide.” The chorus of Ty Dolla Sign is more of the same. Kanye West didn’t provide much context on the song’s inspiration, either. Playing it during a DJ set in November, he simply said, “This is insane to me, I did this with my brother Ty a couple months ago.”
It is hard to imagine that the music video for “SLIDE” will do much to VULTURE 2 Album sales. The album achieved 107,000 album sales in its first week, which is the lowest sales for a Kanye West album ever. Reviews were even worse. Fans have chided West for dropping the album when it was far from finished. Several changes were made to the final mix, but instead of intriguing listeners, as was the case when West made changes, The life of Pabloit was irritating.
