Kanye West has said that he’s considering all options for releasing his new album, including keeping it off of streaming services.
Ye told the fan site YeFantatics, with whom he has been communicating in recent days, that he has been “talking with the team” about the method of release for his new album with Ty Dolla $ign, Vultures 2.
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“We sell albums on Yeezy.com. I got 20 million instagram followers,” he wrote to YeFanatics. “When 5% of my followers buy an album [t]hat’s 1 million albums sold[.] That’s 300k more than the biggest album last year.
“We sold 1 million items on Yeezy.com on Super Bowl Sunday so we know it’s possible. How do you feel about us not streaming and only selling the album digitally[?]”
West followed that message up by asking YeFanatics if it was possible to sell a million copies of the album.
“When we do that we won’t have the streaming companies in control of the artist anymore,” he said.
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The fan account responded by sharing a poll it conducted about whether fans wanted the second and third parts of the Vultures trilogy to be exclusively for sale on West’s website. As of this writing, 87.5% of respondents voted no.
YeFanatics said that “it would be nice” if the album was available on streaming services, since “many fans do not have the option to pay for the album and others are going to hack it.”
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Ye responded, “It would be nice for our community to support the albums. Streaming is basically pirating.”
See the exchange below.
Vultures 2 failed to arrive on its originally announced release date of Friday, March 8.
In a direct message to YeFanatics in the early hours of what was supposed to be release day, Kanye addressed the delay and revealed that he and Ty are still working on the project.
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“Hi Ye. Will Vultures 2 be available today?” Ye Fanatics asked the rapper, to which he simply replied: “We in the lab.”
It’s currently unclear when Vultures 2 is expected to be released. A third installment, Vultures 3, was previously announced to be dropping on April 5.
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West has talked to YeFantatics not only about current ventures. He’s also contacted them to correct reports about the projects he’s working on.
Last month, the Chicago rap icon clarified to the fan site that he is not actually recording a new solo album called Y3, as had been claimed by Erick Sermon.
“This is fake news. Ain’t no album called Y3,” he wrote. “And ain’t nobody tryna be the ‘old Ye.’ When I made 808s [& Heartbreak] n-ggas was running round talking bought they miss the old Ye.”
“We just made King / Back 2 Me / Carnival/Talking just to name a few. We got the number 1 song in the world and number 1 album in the world with top level beats top level bars top level hooks top level features,” he added, championing the success of Vultures 1.
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“I’m the greatest artist in any genre ever. And I’m just getting started.”
