Vultures 1
Kanye West may have appeased his most diehard fans last night at Rolling Loud, but he likely didn’t win over the millions of skeptics who were open to giving the “Carnival” rapper another chance following his behavior over the last two years.
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When the Vultures 1 star took the stage at Rolling Loud Thursday night (Mar. 14) at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, Calif., most weren’t expecting West to apologize for the hurtful, antisemitic comments he has made over the last few years.
However, he failed to do the one thing that more than 50,000 fans had come out expecting him to do: perform his music. Instead, he and Ty Dolla $ign, his collaborator on his new album, Vultures 1, took the stage without microphones and danced, vibed and waved their hands around while tracks from the album blared over the loudspeakers. In fact, neither artist rapped, sang or spoke during the performance, which took place during the annual hip-hop festival’s opening night.
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Despite the insistence from West and his followers that Thursday’s performance was high art, most fans left the hour-long performance looking disappointed and confused.
“Was I just tricked?” Gloria Appel, 22, from El Segundo, Calif., asked her group of friends as they walked back to their cars. One of her companions offered that, if anything, it was fun dressing up with friends and going out for the night — prompting the group to nervously laugh before scurrying away.
There’s a larger performance art aspect to the show, Ty Dolla $ign suggested in an interview he and West gave to radio personality Big Boi for XXL released this morning but recorded prior to Thursday’s show. “It’s still better than other people’s shows that have a mic,” said Ty during the chat.
What does it mean to “perform” a concert in 2024, when DJs play prerecorded mixes and vocalists sing over backing tracks? For the last two months, Ye and Ty have made millions from hosting “listening party” events around the world — effectively the same thing they did Thursday night — in the process generating some praise and lots of press for West as he once again attempts to revive his career. It also puts cash in Ty’s pocket, who, on the Vultures 1 track “Paid,” fittingly raps: “I’m just here to get paid.”
That same quote was retweeted Thursday night by The Rolling Loud team who spent weeks dodging specifics on the show. What was communicated to fans was that the concert was supposed to be different than the listening parties. During an X Spaces session with fans on Feb. 28, Rolling Loud co-founder Tariq Cherif told participants, “I’m fully prepared for Ye to perform and Ty Dollar $ign to perform. Whether or not they decide to grab the mic is up to them. That’s what they’re contracted to do.” Afterward, for clarity, a rep for the festival confirmed with Billboard that West and Ty Dollar $ign were “contracted to perform a live performance.”
Even if West and Ty Dollar $ign didn’t rap or sing, they clearly invested the kind of money associated with a major headline concert. There were dozens of stage managers and production and front-of-house staff furiously directing the set as the artists wandererd on and off the specially created in-the-round style stage, which was wedged between the bright red exterior lights of the KIA Forum and the subtler hues of the multibillion-dollar SoFi Stadium. During the set, West roamed the stage in a black jacket and a face mask as Vultures 1 tracks played over the festival’s huge sound system. After he and Ty Dollar $ign exited the stage for good, an offstage DJ continued on, playing about 30 minutes worth of classic Kanye tracks including “N* in Paris,” “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1” and “All of the Lights.”
Most fans watched the performance without any visible reaction, though some modestly applauded at times. From the start of the show, it was unclear what was happening on stage, and by the time it ended, around 10 p.m., about half the fans in attendance had already trickled out. Those remaining behind took their time walking the exceedingly long, winding fence maze back to their cars, with many overheard saying that while the show was not what they had hoped for, it was what they expected. Kanye wasn’t speaking to them any longer, one fan noted, and he probably wasn’t listening to them, either.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement for West, who has hired back former manager John Monopoly and is planning a global tour for 2024, according to a recent Billboard report.
Following the confusion on Thursday night, one thing is clear: If West isn’t going to perform live at his future shows, he should be more transparent about it. While he certainly entertained at least some of his fans, he did so with a bare minimum of effort and, ahead of the show, didn’t make any attempt to repudiate rumors that he was planning to sing and rap.
As West told Big Boi during their interview, he believes most fans are coming to his events “just for the experience.” He further noted that he wants to create more call-and-response style chants with the audience at his performances, but didn’t explain how he could do that without speaking on stage. He said a highlight of past listening parties was hearing attendees mimic the wailing chorus of “Carnival,” noting that fans have come up with their own chant: shouting “F— Adidas!” after the shoemaker cut ties with him in 2022.
As for which artist would open future concerts, West had a unique suggestion.
“The smoke is like an opener with the lights themself,” he told Big Boi as Ty Dolla $ign shook his head in approval. West probably meant to say “fog,” the industry term for the smoky effect created by atomizing glycerin-based fluids with mineral oil. West is certainly right about the substance’s appeal to fans. As many in the business say, the fog effect has almost no downside — it’s just here to get sprayed.
Kanye West’s short but lucrative five-show run of listening parties for his Vultures 1 album with Ty Dolla $ign generated more than $12 million in ticket sales, Billboard estimates based on available data. West’s first two listening events in the United States — Feb. 8 at United Center in Chicago and Feb. 9 at […]
In September 2020, Kanye West fired off a series of “NEW RECORDING AND PUBLISHING DEAL GUIDELINES” on Twitter, the app now known as X. He called for artist-friendly income splits — 80% to the musician — and contracts that are easy to understand. “The artist owns the copyright in the recordings and songs,” West proposed, “and leases them to the record label / publisher for a limited term.”
His new album Vultures 1, a full-length collaboration with the singer Ty Dolla $ign, arrives with even fewer strings attached — he doesn’t have a label partner, just a distribution company (Label Engine) to help ensure the music’s presence on streaming services. This arrangement outside of the major label system means that West and Ty Dolla $ign are likely taking home even more than the 80% cut the rapper tweeted about in 2020. Although Label Engine advertises that clients get 82.5% of revenue, stars like West almost certainly have the leverage to push that number significantly higher.
Billboard estimates that Vultures 1, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, earned a little more than $1 million in its opening week in the United States, mostly from streaming (around $892,000 from close to 169 million on-demand streams) plus a little extra from sales (roughly $145,000). If West and Ty Dolla $ign are giving up 5% for distribution — which might be high — they take home around $986,000. (More when you factor in global streams and publishing.)
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Contrast this with the situation West faced at the start of his career in the major label system: Images of old contracts he tweeted in 2020 indicate that when he made The College Dropout, he earned a 14% royalty on albums sold in the U.S. As is typical in a royalty deal, West’s old contract notes that “no royalties shall be due and payable… until such time as all advances have been recouped.” That recoupment comes out of an artist’s share, meaning that measly 14% rate has to do all the heavy lifting to earn the advances back.
In a theoretical example, if West was in this deal and he had just $1 million in recoupable expenses (such as an advance) associated with an album — which would be low for him, historically speaking — that release would need to generate more than $7 million in total sales income for him to recoup and start earning money from his music going forward. (In this simple hypothetical, an artist is only generating income through sales, not synchs or other ancillary sources, and the royalty rate isn’t increasing when an artist hits certain sales thresholds.)
To generate around $1 million in royalties for its creators, as Vultures 1 did for West and Ty Dolla $ign in just one week, the album stuck in a 14% royalty deal would then have to earn an additional $7 million in total sales revenue. Translated to on-demand streams, that would mean around another 1.3 billion plays.
Since West is no longer affiliated with a major label, the commercial success of Vultures 1 has been lauded on social media as a breakthrough moment for the independent sector. But while calling the rapper independent is technically accurate — he’s not working with a major label — it’s also misleading. Imagine if Lebron James retired and people started describing him as an amateur basketball player because he was no longer on an NBA roster.
The term independent gets thrown around a lot these days. gamma boss Larry Jackson recently called Usher “the first independent artist to ever play the Super Bowl.” (Usher, by the way, has the No. 2 album in the country with Coming Home.)
Both West and Usher built their superstar careers within the major-label system, however. They were thrown lavish budgets to make their albums. And they benefited from the full weight of the record companies’ promotional muscle at a time when those companies had a lot of influence over what the public heard.
In West’s case, images of recording agreements he tweeted in 2020 showed that Universal Music Group forked over an $8 million advance for Yeezus, along with another $4 million for recording and sample clearances. The contract photos also indicated that Universal was prepared to pay a $3 million advance and an additional $3 million for recording and clearances for The Life of Pablo. UMG also poured money into marketing and radio promo over the years. It’s hard to imagine West — who has since arguably become as well known for his troubling history of antisemitic comments, which have lost him numerous business deals, as for his music — reaching the level of cultural ubiquity he achieved without that investment from the majors.
And even if the rapper is enjoying a larger share of profits from his music these days, the real money may be coming to him from outside of the music industry: West recently claimed he made more than $19 million off of clothing sales in a single day.
During its first week of release, Vultures 1, the first full-length release from the artist formerly known as Kanye West and singer Ty Dolla $ign, changed distributors, was pulled from Apple Music temporarily and got cut by a song to ward off a possible copyright infringement issue brought up by Donna Summer’s estate. So far, the story of the album may be as interesting as the music itself — and Billboard has reported that some samples remain uncleared, which suggests that this could only be the beginning.
Like many hip-hop artists, Ye makes music that involves both snippets of other recordings (samples) and passages of other songs that are re-recorded (interpolations, which confusingly are often referred to as samples as well). Samples generally require a license from the owner of the recording and the underlying composition, while interpolations only require the latter. West seems to have cleared some of the samples and interpolations he’s used, but not all of them.
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There was a time when that would have been dangerous. When the music business was dominated by physical media, rights holders whose work was used without a license had the legal leverage they needed to take most, or even all, of the rights to a song, as ABKCO famously did with the Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” which sampled a version of the ABKCO-controlled Rolling Stones song “The Last Time.” The Verve’s only other choice would have been to destroy all existing copies of the album it was on and stop promoting what became its breakthrough hit.
West won’t face those issues, partly because no single song on Vultures 1 depends as much on one sample or interpolation, and partly because the nature of streaming means that most music — most art, really — isn’t ever really final anymore. When the estate of Donna Summer said that West had used elements of “I Feel Love” without a license for “Good (Don’t Die),” the song was simply pulled offline. Uncleared samples could be re-recorded, if West can get permission from a publisher but not a label, or simply replaced by other musical elements. Albums can evolve for legal reasons as well as artistic ones.
This is an extreme example of what seems like a general trend, as is the Travis Scott album Utopia which Billboard recently reported has its own issues with songwriting credits and royalty splits. In this case, Scott worked with producers and co-writers but didn’t finalize all of the relevant agreements. Scott is far from the only artist to deal with this issue. Here, too, Scott’s collaborators could sue — although this would be a foolish move since many of them depend on his star power to market their work and the nature of streaming blunts potential legal threats.
In both cases, the balance of power in a licensing system that initially gave more leverage to songwriters and other rights holders is now tilting toward recording artists, especially powerful ones. That could be bad for other creators, because the less money they make, the more tempted they are to take any deal they can get to keep money coming in. In most cases, delays in negotiation and payment are just that — arranging all the co-writing deals gets very complicated because there’s only so much credit, and thus royalties, to go around. But the way the leverage shifts toward artists doesn’t exactly inspire their teams to deal with this as fast as possible.
The same kind of pressure doesn’t apply to publishers that control interpolation rights for older songs, but it’s important to remember that this money, too, goes to creators — often on better terms than streaming revenue does. Financial issues aside, creators also have the right to decide if they want to be associated with other creators, just as they have the right to turn down advertisement opportunities. In West’s case, Ozzy Osbourne turned down West’s request to sample a live version of “Iron Man,” which he wrote with his bandmates in Black Sabbath, because of West’s antisemitic comments. So West simply went ahead and sampled his own song, “Hell of a Life,” which uses the same riff. Osbourne should be able to prevent that — his team didn’t comment on West’s use of this other song — and he may decide to try.
The music business needs a code of conduct to deal with this situation before it gets any worse. If it’s overly strict to require artists to sort out all rights before the release of an album, a voluntary code could mandate having rough agreements in place or requiring final ones to be completed within a certain amount of time. The idea would be to give artists the time they need to sort out rights issues, within reasonable deadlines that will keep negotiations relatively equitable. If artists can’t figure out the credits issues that get their collaborators paid, maybe they shouldn’t submit their music for the Grammy Awards — which are voted on by other creators — or even be allowed to. The idea isn’t to penalize anyone, just to create a hard deadline.
None of this would address Osbourne’s issue with West, which I can’t help but take more seriously than the others. Think about it: The No. 1 album in the country this week is by an antisemite who has praised Adolph Hitler and the Nazis and will soon headline a major festival. (In December, West apologized for his comments with a statement in Hebrew but it’s hard to know how seriously to take that, considering that this album has a line about how “I just f—ed a Jewish b—-.”) I think it’s possible to enjoy good art made by bad people, and I assume that most people listening to Vultures 1 don’t agree with the crazy things West has said. At the same time, it feels wrong to write about the copyright issues West faces without acknowledging how hateful he has been. Presumably, West will find ways to license the snippets of music he uses on this album or else replace them. But as he faces pushback from creators and rights holders who are reluctant to be associated with him, as Osbourne is, perhaps he’ll begin a more serious effort to make up for some of the awful things he’s said.
Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign are bringing Vultures 1 to Paris. On Saturday (Feb. 18), Ye and Ty announced through social media that they will present their new joint album to fans at Paris’ Accor Arena on Sunday, Feb. 25. The duo’s newly announced “listening experience” follows previously announced events scheduled in Italy. Earlier […]
Even after Ozzy Osbourne denied Kanye West‘s sampling request on his new album with Ty Dolla $ign, Vultures 1, elements of the Black Sabbath hit “Iron Man” still appear on the album.
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The version of Vultures 1 that West released does not use that sample of Ozzy Osbourne’s solo band performing “Iron Man” at the 1983 Us Festival. Instead, it uses a sample of West’s own track, “Hell of a Life,” released in 2010 with Universal Music Group (UMG), which also includes an interpolation of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” guitar riff. This use would likely also require approval from the members of that band — Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward — all of whom have writing and publishing credits on “Hell of a Life.”
Because “Hell of a Life” includes several samples, there are actually more songwriters on that track than on “Iron Man” alone. They also include swamp rocker Tony White Joe and Sylvester Stewart, better known as Sly Stone. The Stewart song comes from a sample of “She’s My Baby” by The Mojo Men, a band which Stewart played with and wrote for early on in his career. Randall Wixen, founder of Wixen Music Publishing, which represents “She’s My Baby” and controls a 35% stake in the “Hell of a Life” songwriting and publishing, confirms the “Carnival” use was not cleared by his company either.
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“It’s ironic that Kanye replaced the unlicensed sample of the Ozzy Osbourne track ‘Iron Man’ with a sample of ‘Hell of a Life,’ which also samples a song by Osbourne and Tony Iommi,” says Wixen. “So, he’s just substituted one unauthorized Ozzy sample for another and now brought our song into the picture. In a perfect world, all samples would be approved and cleared prior to release. It is basic respect for the songwriter.”
It’s not the only unlicensed use of a song or recording on the record, either. A spokesperson for Primary Wave, which has a partnership with James Brown‘s estate, tells Billboard that a use of The Godfather of Soul’s oft-sampled “Funky President (People It’s Bad)” was not cleared for use on the Vultures 1 track “Fuk Sumn.”
It is not unusual for albums to be released with unsettled songwriter splits, often to writers and publishers’ consternation. It’s less common that an album is released without clearing samples or interpolations, though Rell Lafargue, president and COO of Reservoir Media, says it still happens. But the level of West’s popularity — and notoriety — makes album an extreme example.
West’s team is working with the sample clearance company Alien Music Services to license these works and, according to multiple sources, they have so far secured a patchwork of licenses needed. Some works are cleared, others are not and some only partially. For example, Lafargue says Reservoir is currently negotiating the use of a sample of Brand Nubian‘s “Slow Down,” for the album track “Keys to My Life,” but the deal is not done yet. Multiple sources also say they were only approached with licensing requests after Vultures 1 was released last Saturday. Now the album is a serious contender to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart next week.
“On the level of Kanye in 2024 to put out an entire album with samples that haven’t even been requested to be cleared, I don’t think I’ve ever really seen that today,” says Lafargue, who helped release De La Soul’s recording catalog to streaming services last year after it was famously tied up in sample clearance issues. “That’s the exception for sure.”
This has already led to problems for the album. On Wednesday, the song “Good (Don’t Die)” was pulled from Spotify following a copyright infringement claim filed days earlier on behalf of Donna Summer‘s estate, and other streaming services soon followed suit. The estate claimed on a social media post that West’s team had asked for permission to use Summer’s iconic hit “I Feel Love” and had been denied, but the album was released with an interpolation on it anyway.
Separately, on Thursday, the platform used to distribute Vultures 1 to streaming services, FUGA, told Billboard it was removing the album from its systems. However, there was no suggestion that was related to sample or interpolation clearance issues. The album is now being distributed by Label Engine, a service owned by Create Music Group.
Che’ Pope from Yeezy Music says that licensing discussions are “in process” for the album and “everything’s in great shape, except for Ozzy Osbourne and Donna Summer.” He says that the Summer use should never have been released, and that the team is working on the “Carnival” issue now. With “Carnival,” Pope says West just needed a “guitar turnaround” on the track (the use appears around 1:43) and they can “figure out a way to play something else there,” unlike with “Good (Don’t Die)” where the interpolation was more material to the song. “There’s a few of us who play guitar,” Pope adds.
West plans to release Vultures as a trilogy project, and Pope says the licensing issues leading up to this album’s release were a matter of which songs were going to make the cut. “We didn’t know what was actually on the album until it got closer to release date,” he says. “So the thing is we had all the samples from what could potentially be all on any of the three volumes.”
It’s rare that streaming services will pull a major artist’s song over an unlicensed sample or interpolation. More typically, a deal is worked out between the artist’s and creators’ teams to put a license in place, and since the track is already out the artist loses leverage in those negotiations and will often give up a larger share of the rights. This was famously the case with The Verve‘s hit “Bittersweet Symphony,” which was based on a sample from a 1965 version of The Rolling Stones‘ song “The Last Time.” Since the band did not clear the song with The Rolling Stones’ former manager, Allen Klein, who owned the copyrights to their pre-1970 songs, frontman Richard Ashcroft was forced to relinquish all publishing to Klein’s company ABKCO Music and the songwriting credits were changed to The Stones’ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
While West built a name for himself as an all-time great hip-hop producer with exquisite use of samples and interpolations, with this release that’s been complicated by his recent history of antisemitism, starting in 2022 and after which he was widely condemned and lost numerous business deals. Speaking with Billboard on Feb. 9, Ozzy Osbourne’s wife and manager Sharon Osbourne noted that Ozzy often allows other artists to sample his work, “but the simple thing is, we don’t want to be associated with a hater.”
Sharon Osbourne, who is daughter of the U.K. music manager Don Arden and was raised Jewish, continued, “To spread hate the way he does, it shouldn’t be allowed. All the excuses — he’s bipolar or whatever — doesn’t change that. It’s like, f— you, basically.”
In all, Vultures 1 has at least two dozen samples and interpolations across 16 tracks, according to the website WhoSampled.com and reviewed by Billboard. Those include several uses of West’s own older music, like with “Hell of a Life” on “Carnival” and his 2012 track “Cold” on “Vultures” — all of which would presumably require licenses with UMG, under which he released those earlier recordings. There are also uses of samples from the film Dogma and a TikTok video of a cheer group and an interview with Mike Tyson from a podcast with Hollywood Unlocked’s Jason Lee, who was formerly West’s head of media and partnerships. And, of course, there is a lot of other creators’ music.
Pope says the licensing process on this album has not been “different from any album” prior, but adds that as West’s first proper release as an independent artist after he no longer benefits from easier clearances within the UMG system. (Aside from West’s own tracks, the UMG record samples include “Back That Azz Up (Back That Thang Up)” by Juvenile, “Bring the Noise” by Public Enemy and “Jubilation” by Pierre Henry and Spooky Tooth, among others.) There are also the image issues. “The landscape, his reality is different,” says Pope. “He’s got an uphill battle in certain areas. Clearing samples is never easy, but this one is more challenging just because of how the landscape on everything is.”
Most record labels and publishers contacted for this story declined to comment, with many saying they do not speak on individual licensing deals and that their policy is to follow their artists’ and songwriters’ wishes in these cases. Not every artist and songwriter involved, however, may know that their work is featured on Vultures 1.
Indie R&B artist Dijon posted to Instagram Stories on Feb. 9, a day before the album’s release, suggesting that he was unaware his song “Good Luck” was being sampled on the track “Stars”. (Now Pope says Dijon “should be good,” though, and the artist’s reps declined to comment.) Wixen and Primary Wave only learned of their creators’ uses on the album until Billboard contacted the companies, and considering the complexity of licensing a sample that contains a sample, it’s easy to imagine that some rights holders still don’t know their work is being used.
Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians, for example, according to the Songview database, have songwriting credits on Brand Nubian’s “Slow Down” because it samples their 1988 hit “What I Am.” Universal Music Publishing Group, which reps the band’s publishing on the song did not respond to request for comment.
The song “Fuk Sumn” also samples late Three 6 Mafia member Koopsta Knicca‘s underground single “Smoking on a J,” which itself samples the Days of Our Lives theme song and Isaac Hayes‘ “Walk From Regio’s” off the 1971 Shaft soundtrack, according to WhoSampled.com and Billboard‘s own review.
West’s own “So Appalled” from 2010 is sampled on the track “Problematic,” but that also includes Manfred Mann on the songwriting credits due to a sample of “You Are – I Am,” according to Songview.
All said, a project like Vultures 1 could require upwards of 50 clearances, says Danny Zook, CEO of Alien Music Services. “We are working diligently to clear all the samples on this project,” he says.
Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 1 album has been removed from Apple Music after five days on the streaming service.
Vultures 1 was taken down from Apple Music on Thursday afternoon (Feb. 15) without any explanation as to why.
The project was also wiped from iTunes and scrubbed from the Apple Music charts, where the Rich The Kid and Playboi Carti-assisted “CARNIVAL” had held the No. 1 slot on the Top 100: Global chart. However, “CARNIVAL” has since been added back as a single to Apple Music and YouTube Music.
Earlier on Thursday (Feb. 15), Billboard reported that the album’s distribution company FUGA — a business-to-business tech and distribution platform for labels — had plans to work with DSPs to take the project off streaming in its entirety.
“Late last year, FUGA was presented with the opportunity to release Vultures 1,” a FUGA spokesperson said in a statement to Billboard. “Exercising our judgment in the ordinary course of business, we declined to do so.”
The spokesperson continued: “On Friday, Feb. 9, 2024, a long-standing FUGA client delivered the album Vultures 1 through the platform’s automated processes, violating our service agreement. Therefore, FUGA is actively working with its DSP partners and the client to remove Vultures 1 from our systems.”
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The FUGA spokesperson didn’t clarify whether the company would help facilitate a transfer to another distributor.
While Apple Music has removed the project, Vultures 1 remains on other streamers like Spotify and Amazon Music as of press time.
However, the project faced its first streaming issues on Wednesday (Feb. 14) when Spotify removed “Good (Don’t Die)” from its platform due to claims of “copyright infringement” made by Donna Summer’s estate. The electro-pop deep cut appears to interpolate elements of Donna Summer‘s 1977 hit “I Feel Love” on the pensive chorus, and the estate says it didn’t approve of its use.
“Kanye West… asked permission to use Donna Summer’s song I Feel Love, he was denied… he changed the words, had someone re sing it or used AI but it’s I Feel Love… copyright infringement!!!” the estate wrote in an Instagram Story on the official Donna Summer account Saturday (Feb. 10).
Amazon Music followed suit with the removal of “Good (Don’t Die)” on Thursday (Feb. 15), and it appears more Vultures fallout is on the horizon.
Billboard has reached out to Apple Music and West’s reps for comment.
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