If there were any further proof needed that cancel culture isn’t real, look to Kanye West. After the artist now known as Ye made a series of antisemitic remarks that prompted many fans and commercial partners to desert him, plenty of other fans remained, spurring him to his biggest commercial success in years.
Not only did the Ty Dolla $ign collaboration Vultures 1 top the US album chart on its release in February – West’s albums invariably do – it also produced a genuine global hit in Carnival, which took him back to the top of the US singles chart for the first time since 2011. There was no dignified cleaning of the slate – the title track joked about the antisemitism in the ugliest manner imaginable – but most critics felt that Vultures 1 was at least an improvement on his previous album, 2021’s Donda.
