The sky is blue, water is wet, and Ye has pushed back the release of his new album at the last minute. Vultures, the new collaboration between Ty Dolla $ign and the artist formerly known as Kanye West, was due to drop on December 15, but the release never came. Neither artist has offered an update or explanation as to why the release was delayed—and frankly, at this point, it’s pretty typical of a Ye project. But one possible reason has emerged, and it has to do with Nicki Minaj.
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On Thursday (mere hours before the album was meant to debut), Ye posted a screenshot to Twitter/X of a text message to Minaj which read: “May I call you about clearing new body on the new album.” The song, which Ty Dolla $ign publicized on Instagram as part of the tracklist a week ago, has been in the works since at least 2018, when it was meant to be part of the scrapped Yandhi, and another version was reportedly recorded for 2019’s Jesus Is King, but didn’t make the final tracklist.
For Minaj, who recently released her own album Pink Friday 2, the window for “New Body” has closed. “Regarding Kanye: that train has left the station, OK?” She said during an Instagram Live after Ye posted the text message (per The Guardian). “No disrespect in any way. I just put out a brand new album. Why would I put out a song that has been out for three years? Come on, guys.”
Minaj seems to have been over this situation for a while. In an interview with The Shade Room in 2019, she shared, “I done wrote three different verses chile, and I don’t know. We ain’t seeing eye to eye on it.” And in 2022, she said (per NME), “The public adored ‘New Body.’ Like, ‘New Body’ is the biggest hit record that never came out. … Kanye made me write my ‘New Body’ verse four times over in order to fit into where he was creatively and spiritually in his life, right, only to then, I go on the internet a few months later to see him on Drink Champs.” The rapper added, “Everybody knows that’s the hit that got away … I think the ship has sailed for ‘New Body,’ everybody has come to love the original way they heard it.”
Meanwhile, as Vultures languishes, Ye is busy promoting Yeezy’s “first product since liberation from Adidas” and making yet more antisemitic comments. According to TMZ, Ye held court in Vegas early Friday morning, spouting conspiracy theories, disavowing Donald Trump, and badmouthing former business partners to a room full of people for nearly ten minutes. His rant included the alarming exclamation, “Jesus Christ, Hitler, Ye! Sponsor that!” The controversial artist was reported to have worn a black “KKK-style” hood to one of the Vultures listening parties; the album reportedly (via NME) includes the lyric “How I’m anti-Semitic? I just fucked a Jewish bitch.”