Last month, Kanye West released the first instalment of his three-album series with Ty Dolla $ign, Vultures 1. Fans have been eagerly awaiting the second body of work in the trilogy. However, recently, there have been rumours that the emcee and producer is considering not putting it on streaming services.
The Twitter/X fan account @yefanatics recently had contact with the Chicago native and his management and, as a result, has given fans some insight into the project’s current status.
In some screenshots of the exchange posted by the fan account, West and Ty Dolla $ign will be playing both Vultures 1 and 2 at a private Phoenix listening party. However, there have been some deliberations about how West will roll out the new album.
In a direct message to the account, West wrote: “Was talking with the team about how to release the next album. Like James Blake said, streaming devalues our music. We sell albums on Yeezy.com. I got 20 million Instagram followers. When 5% of my followers buy an album.”
He continued, “That’s 1 million albums sold. That’s 300k more than the biggest album last year. We sold 1 million items on Yeezy.com on Super Bowl Sunday, so we know it’s possible. How do you feel about us not streaming and only selling the album digitally.”
Following the message, the fan account conducted a poll asking whether they would be happy to download the album from yeezy.com instead of streaming it. However, 87.5% of respondents voted no. The admin said that “it would be nice” if the album was available on streaming services, since “many fans do not have the option to pay for the album and others are going to hack it.”
Vultures 2 was initially meant to hit streaming services on March 8th. However, the Chicago emcee is infamous for his delays as he carefully crafts his projects in their final stages.