Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign have yet to release the second installment of their ongoing(?) trilogy project, Vultures, and now, they’ve even canceled multiple planned listening events for the first two parts, according to Billboard. They were planning to hold the listening parties in arenas across the US, but did not give a reason for the cancelations — only a vague promise that new dates will be announced.
Cities touted on Ticketmaster included dates in Washington, DC; Tampa, Florida; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Nashville, Tennessee; and Charlotte, North Carolina. A listening on April 21 at the Pyramids at Giza in Egypt is still selling tickets.
Although Vultures 1 was a commercial success, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and spawning a No. 1 single on the Hot 100 in “Carnival,” Vultures 2 did not materialize on its scheduled release date, March 8, and Kanye appeared to debate a direct-to-consumer release. However, that still hasn’t happened, and the third release date is already rapidly approaching.
The rocky rollout could possibly be attributed to reports that the distributor for Vultures 1, FUGA, released a statement shortly after it hit DSPs alleging that the album had been released without clearance. FUGA claims it was submitted by a different partner after the company declined a partnership with Kanye and Ty due to Kanye’s antisemitic comments and other erratic behaviors. It was removed from Apple Music, but not Spotify, which allowed it to reach its impressive milestone, but apparently left Kanye without a distributor for the second and third installments.
Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time Kanye has canceled listening sessions. Several of the events promoted for the first Vultures release were also canceled at the last minute. However, according to some fans’ responses to Kanye and Ty’s Rolling Loud “performance,” it doesn’t sound like fans missed much.
