In January, Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign announced that their joint project Vultures had been reimagined as three complete albums after several delays to the original release. At the time, they gave three new release dates: February 9, March 8, and April 5. With the first part out already and the second part scheduled for release this New Music Friday, when can fans expect it to hit DSPs like Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal?
With most releases, the answer would be 9 pm PT or midnight ET tonight, but with Kanye West, release dates are more like vague suggestions than hard deadlines. Fans watched the first Vultures release date come and go in December without a hint of the new album, with Kanye insinuating that it might have been Nicki Minaj’s fault for not clearing a verse he asked for at the last minute. A second release date in late December also disappointed fans — but didn’t surprise them — and the third release date, the aforementioned February 9, also nearly passed without the album coming out.
However, while Kanye did manage to get the album out on the day (if not at the expected time), it was not without issues. The album was pulled from Apple Music by its distributor, FUGA, which issued a statement claiming that Kanye had only gotten the album through its service through skullduggery and that it was working with DSPs to have it removed entirely. While it’s still available on Spotify, the song “Good (Don’t Die)” was removed after Donna Summer’s estate filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement over an authorized interpolation of her song “I Feel Love.”
So, Vultures 2 might not even come to Apple Music, unless Kanye has a contingency plan, and even if it does, it almost certainly won’t be at midnight. The rest remains to be seen.