Ye (f/k/a Kanye West) has since spent the first part of his music career trying to perfect the sound of his drums. One of the most famous hip hop lores is Ye mixing "Stronger" 18 times and still not getting the drums to sound right, so he went to Timbaland to mix it.

The two albums since the 2007 Graduation album, 808s & Heartbreak and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, were Ye showcasing how perfect his drum production skills had become. Those two albums are Ye’s most influential and most critically acclaimed, respectively.

The Roots drummer Questlove said in a 2015 Juan Epstein podcast appearance that he has had to replace his speakers more than once because Kanye’s drum productions have zero respect for one’s speakers.

Ye has said My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was his attempt to show off his greatness as a hip-hop producer. Ye perfected his drums. After achieving that, Ye started moving away from the sound that made him the super producer he is, soul samples and big drums.

Yeezus was Ye’s first attempt to move away from the popular beloved sound of big hip-hop drums to a more minimalist industrial sound. Yeezus was the first Ye album to sell less than 400,000 copies in the first week.

In 2013, he said he knew he could have made the Yeezus album more palatable by changing the arrangement of the tracklist, and he was right. Opening the album with the familiar sample of Nina Simone singing the dark song, "Strange Fruit," would have prepared the audience for the dark place he was taking them with the album.

"Blood on the Leaves" was the song most similar to Ye’s earlier sound on Yeezus, and leading with it would have positively impacted the reception to his sixth album. He knew that and clearly did not care. That is proof that Ye has been sounding dark on purpose. Every album since Yeezus has been Ye moving further and further away from big hip-hop drums.

Some albums like The Life of Pablo, Jesus Is King, and Ye had enough big drums to sound hip hop and commercial while he still tried to experiment with new sounds. A throughline every Ye album since Yeezus has had is how haunting, horrid, and eerie they sound. It’s like since J.Cole said, “It’s way darker this time” on Born Sinner, Ye’s music has gotten darker and darker. Every album is an attempt to sound even darker.

Even his gospel phase had him choosing the darker sounds of Catholic and other European church music over the more cheerful, happy sounds of black church music. Ye’s Sunday Service events were accused of being cult-like.

That was because the music that was being played was dark and more reminiscent of medieval times in Europe. If the choir clapped and sang at a faster tempo, in a manner that is more reminiscent of the black church choir, they wouldn’t have been accused of being a cult.

In the viral 2021 Drink Champs interview, Ye said the sound of the Sunday Service Choir was a mixture of Catholic church music and Timbaland. That is true of their first album, Jesus Is Born. Their second offering, the Emmanuel EP, was all Catholic church music with no Timbaland drums. Some of the songs were even sung in Latin.

Ye’s first Donda LP listening event on July 22, 2021, was an attempt to introduce the public to his dark choir sound without the drums. Many hip hop heads, including DJ Toomp, who worked with Ye on Graduation, thought the album didn't sound complete, particularly due to the lack of drums in its production. “Kanye brought a completely different energy to his second Donda listening event,” Complex reported about the second listening event for the album.

The second version of the album had songs like "Off The Grid," a longer version of "Jesus Lord," "Praise God," and "Hurricane," which sounded more commercial and more hip-hop because of the presence of big drums. Many fans say they would have preferred the second version of the album from August 6, 2021, because the songs and tracklisting flowed perfectly.

The version of the album that was released on DSPs opened with Syleena Johnson chanting Ye’s mom’s name, Donda. The chanting was raw, with her breath and lip-clicking sound left on the track. It sounded eerie and spiritual. The second song, "Jail," had no drums until the end of the song where there was no more singing.

The echo on Ye’s singing and the backing by Marilyn Manson gave the song a more haunting sound. While the third song, "God Breathed," has a livelier dance production, the last minute of the song had choir humming with no drums, a dark departure from the first part of the song. Ye wanted to produce a dark, haunting sound with no drums but had to feed the audience by putting some familiar productions on the album, especially because he treated his listening events as crowdsourcing adventures.

The crowd did not respond kindly to Ye’s attempt to produce the album he wanted to make; an album that sounded like watching a horror movie about cult sacrifices. Try as he may, Ye being a pop superstar means he must produce music that the majority of people will gravitate towards. He gave in to the boos and gave up the “Boo” sound for a more “Boom” sound.

His desire to produce music that he loves, in this case, dark, eerie sound with no hip-hop drums, was not well-received, and they never have been. Kids See Ghosts (with Kid Cudi) is the only Kanye album since The College Dropout to not debut at number one on the Billboard 200 chart.

On March 11, 2024, Ye (f/k/a Kanye West) became the first rapper to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart in three different decades (2000s, 2010s, 2020s). The song, "Carnival" (with Ty Dolla $ign feat. Playboi Carti and Rich the Kid), was his first song to go number one since April 2011 when he topped the chart as a featured artist on Katy Perry’s "E.T.

One week later, Ty Dolla $ign revealed in an exclusive interview with the legendary Los Angeles-based radio personality, Big Boy, that that song nearly did not happen. According to the 42-year-old singer, earlier in the recording sessions for their collaborative album, Vultures, Ye told him he wanted to do an album with no drums.

So, Ty was apprehensive about playing the song that became "Carnival" for Ye, even though it was recorded during the Vultures recording sessions in Saudi Arabia. According to Ty, he played the song for Ye for the first time after the listening event in Las Vegas. Ye loved the song immediately and went ahead to create what has become the masterpiece that "Carnival" is.

His "Carnival" enamor altered the sound he was going for on the Vultures project. The version of Vultures 1 that was released has more drums than the version that was played during last December’s listening events.

Last Friday, August 2, in the late hours, Ye dropped the second installment of his collaborative album with Ty Dolla $ign, Vultures 2. The unannounced drop was met with excitement and confusion as well as the familiar criticism of “this album sounds unfinished.” Good as Ye’s rapping was on the album, another critique was the fact that the raps were bad.

A lot of people found his raps to be underwhelming and lackadaisical. The problem was not the raps, it was the drums. Ye is quoted in Steve Stoute’s book, The Tanning of America, saying the lesson he took from the success of "Jesus Walks" was that no one cares what you say in your raps as long as your drums sound right. On Vultures 2, it sounds like he forgot about that lesson or he does not care.

Vultures 2 is on track to become Ye’s least successful album ever. Vultures 1 has something that Vultures 2 does not—heavy drums and a more cheerful sound. Ye says he cleaned out his social media because he did not like receiving updates about music charts.

This means Vultures 2 is Ye’s first album since Yeezus that did not cater to the audience, and he did what he wanted to do. Unfortunately, since he shut the public out, he cannot take them with him on his dark journey.

Vultures 2 sounds too somnolent to be sonically satisfying for fans who listen to music for gratification. To paraphrase Ye, where is the joy in these songs?! The songs sound like ordering salad in a McDonald’s. I am sure they have healthy options at McDonald’s, but that is not why we go there. We go there to get filled up (pause). We listen to Ye to get pumped up (pause). He is a shot in the morning, the espresso to get us going. BTW, Sabrina Carpenter’s "Espresso" is my favorite white girl anthem of the summer (pause), I digress. It is still summer, and Ye just put out a winter album. My point is, 808s & Heartbreak was a sad album, but people were not turned off by it because the drums drowned out his sorrows in a beautiful way.

Vultures 2 is just the sorrows without the drums. “Slide” is the perfect opening for an album full of pump fakes. The strings set the tone for the eerie sound of the album. Ty’s singing added some beauty to the darkness. The beat drop at the beginning of Ye’s verse added some color to the beautiful darkness.

“Ye got the rhythm, make the ladies go brazy” was a joy-inducing promise. Slide may join the long list of perfect opening songs by Ye. On Sight from Yeezus may be the only bad Ye album opener. All the good time promised by Slide is erased when you hear the minimalist production on a song with magic potential, Time Moving Slow. Pump fake! Ye’s moaning at the bridge of that record could have stayed in the beat throughout his second verse. Another Pump fake!! Field Trip was a bright spot on the album, but it is quickly followed by an attempt to reproduce the magic of Carnival on Fried. Pump fake, again!!!

Jay-Z’s first Top 20 hit is “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem).” Following the success of that record, Jay-Z put out “Anything” hoping another children’s movie soundtrack would capture the audience; it did not. Jay-Z admitted in a 2009 interview that he hoped the song would be as successful as “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” due to their similarities but was surprised when it wasn't. "I dropped the record and then nothing." Anything isn’t quite Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem). “Fried” is just a “Carnival” wannabe, the way “Anything” was.

Ye should have sent that record to Metro Boomin to add more monstrous drums to it. “Fried” needed big drums produced in a more Dirty South strip club production style. I could hear cheeks-clapping-to-this potential. Big pump fake! The biggest pump fake was the 8 seconds of gorgeousness called Isabella. I could hear GloRilla spitting some luxury rap lyrics and Ye spitting some Sugar Daddy lyrics similar to what he did on Teyana Taylor’s Hurry on that record. I hope there is a longer version of the song with Ye fully embracing his new status as a Sugar Daddy and GloRilla rapping about her Baby Girl role. Ty can tie them both together. I need that pumped directly into my veins.

My favorite song on Vultures 2 is “Lifestyle”. I prefer the raw singing at the end of “Lifestyle” more than the polished version of that on “Husband”. Ye’s breathing when singing on “Lifestyle” played on the strings of the keyboard of my heart in a way that brings me to tears. The singing starts with him almost arrogantly asserting that the lady he is singing about will stay with him because he is the best she could do and ends with him pleading with her to stay with him for the lifestyle.

He said, “She wanna live this lifestyle,” but he meant she wanna leave this lifestyle. He is begging a girl to be his gold-digger. That reminds me of the line from Come to Life where he says he does not want to die alone. Sad. Lifestyle is the darker, sadder, and more painful version of Runaway. Ye and Weezy successfully repeated the magic they created on Tha Carter III’s Comfortable, which itself recreated the magic Ye created with Alicia Keys on You Don’t Know My Name. A SLAM DUNK!!!

Trust is an important ingredient of creativity, and it is obvious Ye and Lil Wayne trust each other as creative partners. Self-belief is a component of trust. It is also obvious Ye has lost some self-belief. Husband is proof of that. With no Beyoncé in the studio to encourage him to go with the raw version of the song (like she did during 808s & Heartbreak), putting Husband on the album undermines the magic of his painful singing on Lifestyle. If Field Trip, Fried, and Time Moving Slow had more monstrous, bigger hip hop productions, Lifestyle would have more respect as the soul/R&B sleeper it is. Still a beautiful delivery of an alley-oop.

I am a big fan of minimalist music. My top two Ye songs of all time are Come to Life and Black Skinhead. I am also a big fan of dark music. I used to walk up and down the Aburi Mountains in Ghana after midnight listening to Hooverphonic’s 2002 album, Hooverphonic Presents Jackie Cane. I am also a huge Ye stan, so I love anything he gives me as an artist.

Vultures 2 just left me wanting more—more drums, more monstrous production, and more summertime good time. Vultures 2 just sounds like I imagine Cruel Winter would have sounded. I wish it had more cruel drum productions to provide some warmth to the winter. Ye needed some strippers and Instagram influencers in the studio to inspire him to produce the type of music that brats will love. Bring back the big booms, Ye!

• Nenebi Tony is the author of Everything That Happened and The People Who Made It – Profile of the Top 10 Most Influential Entertainment Brands in the 2010-2020 Decade. He is currently based in Fayetteville, Arkansas.