Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign streamed part of their upcoming joint album, Vultures, live from the United Center in Chicago on Thursday night. And in one of the new songs, “Carnival,” West, who now goes by Ye, name-checks several canceled celebrities and one Taylor Swift.
“Anybody pissed off, gotta make a drink to yawn,” he raps on the track, as seen in a fan-shot clip. “Now I’m K Kelly bitch / Now I’m Bill Cosby bitch / Now I’m Puff Daddy rich.” All three men mentioned by Ye—R. Kelly, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and Bill Cosby—have been convicted for or accused of sexual assault.
Ye also dropped a reference to his longtime arch nemesis Swift: “I mean, since Taylor Swift / Since I had a Rollie on the wrist / I’m the new Jesus, bitch.”
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Both Swift and Cosby, of course, were featured in wax figure form in Ye’s controversial “Famous” music video in 2016. That song—which set off a long public battle involving Swift, Ye, and Kim Kardashian—found Ye rapping, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.”
Ye has been teasing the release of Vultures since the end of 2023, and it was originally intended for release on Jan. 12. He and Ty Dolla $ign then announced that the album would arrive in three parts on Feb. 9, March 8, and April 5. As of Friday morning, however, that first volume has yet to appear on any streaming platforms.
At another point during Thursday night’s listening event, the live stream was cut off as soon as Ye rapped the line, “I’m still crazy, bipolar, antisemite, and I’m still the king.”
Reactions to the abrupt ending on Thursday night were mixed. “Honestly couldn’t tell in the moment if he was being censored by the venue or if he intentionally ended it that way, but what the even fuck,” one person wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. Another added, “Kanye West is a disgusting antisemite. I find it strange that others have been canceled for a whole lot less [than] what this troubled individual has done… the world truly is upside down.”
Over the past couple of years, Ye has made several uneven stabs at re-entering the mainstream after a succession of antisemitic outbursts. But he’s only doubled down on his appalling comments and behavior, which got him dropped by Gap and Adidas at the end of 2022.
Last year, the Anti-Defamation League ripped into the rapper when a lyric from Vulture’s title track—“How am I antisemitic? / I just fucked a Jewish bitch”—hit social media. Ye subsequently attempted to apologize with a statement on Instagram where he wrote, in part, “I sincerely apologize to the Jewish community for any unintended outburst caused by my words or actions.”
