Hip-hop fans eagerly awaiting Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures experience a familiar sense of disappointment as the album is delayed yet again. This is the album’s 3rd consecutive delay, and the initial excitement is melting into disappointment.

First announced in November, Vultures was originally scheduled for release last year. The highly anticipated album was first planned for December 13th and then pushed to the 31st. The two artists unsurprisingly did not meet the year’s deadline and the album had to be pushed to January 12th. Most fans already knew this was an unrealistic release date, as Kid Cudi was dropping ‘INSANO’ that exact day. Because Cudi and Ye “hugged it out” and repaired their relationship recently, it was unlikely that Kanye would like to overshadow Cudi’s upcoming album. 

INSANO wasn’t the only reason why fans had no hope that Vultures would drop the 12th (or any other date). West has a frequent history of releasing albums extremely late or never dropping them at all. The following list (containing data from Wikipedia) displays how late each of his albums has been:

• The College Dropout (2004): 193 days late
• Late Registration (2005): 49 days late
• Graduation (2007): 345 days late
• Good A** Job (Around 2008): Never dropped
• 808s and Heartbreak (2008): 1 day early
• My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010): On-time
• Watch The Throne (2011): 209 days late
• Yeezus (2013): On-time
• The Life of Pablo (2016): 531 days late
• TurboGrafx16 (Around 2016): Never dropped
• Ye (2018): A few hours late
• Kids See Ghosts (2018): On-time
• Yandhi (Around 2018): Never dropped
• Jesus Is King (2018): 28 days late
• Donda (2019): 401 days late
• Donda 2 (2022): 1 day late (partially)

From the delays of some of his previous albums, such as The Life of Pablo and Donda, we can never assume how long we’ll have to wait for an album from Kanye. Even his debut album, The College Dropout, was over half a year late. You have to be patient with Ye.

There have been several other hints through the past months revealing delays; for example – a website’s source code, as crazy as that may sound. Ty and Kanye set up a website for pre-downloading Vultures, which contained an attribute for the drop date of the album deep in the site’s code. This code seemed to be updated every time the album was delayed with a new date, the current being January 26th. This contradicts many sources claiming that the 19th is its release date, and Apple Music still labels it as 12/31 of last year. 

Currently, only Vultures’  lead single has been released, identically titled ‘Vultures’. The title track was met with mixed reception, some claiming he’s washed and others claiming it’s the greatest comeback of the decade. Although no other songs on the track list have been officially released, all of Vultures has been leaked online. This possibly could have been the cause of Ty and Kanye delaying the album even further. 

This wouldn’t be an article about Kanye West if I failed to mention the controversies surrounding the artist. Vultures is Ye’s first album since his short exile from society, following his extremely controversial remarks about the Jewish people and Hitler. These actions brought great condemnation to the rapper, who lost his partnership with Adidas, $1.4 billion, and his fame along with it. 

He recently took to Instagram to post an apology to the Jewish community, stating “It was not my intention to offend or demean, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused, I am committed to starting with myself and learning from this experience to ensure greater sensitivity and understanding in the future. Your forgiveness is important to me, and I am committed to making amends and promoting unity,” completely in Hebrew. Recently Kanye has begun to return to social media after his year-long absence as he’s from multiple platforms. Adidas agreed to sell Yeezys again, there is plenty of hype for Vultures, he and his daughter have been spending time together, and things seem to going right for the award-winning artist. 

It’s still unclear when Ty Dolla $ign and Kanye West’s album will be released, or if it will even drop at all, but with his history of delays, fans are accustomed to waiting.