{"id":6633,"date":"2025-01-22T14:20:18","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T20:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/?p=6633"},"modified":"2025-01-23T14:26:15","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T20:26:15","slug":"carnival-vultures-1-and-2024s-fascist-rap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/2025\/01\/22\/carnival-vultures-1-and-2024s-fascist-rap\/","title":{"rendered":"“Carnival”, Vultures 1, and 2024’s Fascist Rap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s no secret that Kanye West is a raving neo-fascist. I\u2019m not here to explain the comments he made in 2023 regarding black people, Jewish people, and other comments praising fascist dictators. We all know this. I don\u2019t need to explain it. I\u2019m here to talk about one of the worst albums of 2024, Vultures 1<\/em>. Vultures 2<\/em> was also a terrible album, but everyone seems to agree on that; riddled with AI-generated Kanye verses (?) and incomplete songs, that album was more of a technical mess rather than anything else. Vultures 1<\/em> on the other hand, is what I\u2019m going to refer to as \u201cFascist Rap\u201d. Fascist music isn\u2019t anything new, with the likes of Burzum\/Varg Vikernes and other Scandinavian metal artists being outward white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Kanye definitely took inspiration from these people, donning a Burzum shirt in a picture with JPEG Mafia (ironic given that JPEG claims to be a leftist) and the original Vultures 1<\/em> cover being inspired by Burzum artwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Images courtesy of Vulture (left) and Genius (right)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will note that I never listened to the entirety of Vultures 1<\/em>, the lyrics were so cringe-worthy and creepily horny that I couldn\u2019t sit through more than a few songs. I got the gist of it though, I didn\u2019t really need to subject myself to a full listen. But I, like most social media users, was bombarded with the song \u201cCarnival\u201d. This is the song I\u2019m going to be mostly analyzing. As many of you are probably all too familiar with, the song opens with a group of men chanting \u201cGo, go, go, go\/Head so good, she an honor roll\/She’ll ride the dick like a carnival\/I done did the impossible\u201d. While this may just seem like any other trap anthem, the group chanting is actually the Inter Milan Ultras. If you\u2019re not familiar with European Ultra culture, these are basically huge fan groups that are at every game, the ones that lead the chants and throw flares and trash at opposing teams. Ultras are an essential part of many soccer clubs and, in general, I love the atmosphere that they bring to stadiums. Some teams\u2019 ultras, especially Italian ultras, are known for their political affiliations. Apart from my distaste for Inter Milan as a club (Forza Juve), the Inter Milan ultras are distinctly far-right and well-known around Italy for their political beliefs. It’s not a coincidence that they are featured in this song. Their chant in the song, which is the song’s chorus, is distinctly masculine (a key characteristic of past and current fascist movements) especially when the lyrics accompany it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Inter Milan Ultras displaying their political beliefs\/\/Image courtesy of CNN<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This song\u2019s production isn\u2019t terrible, and at first, it\u2019s a cool idea to incorporate European ultra chanting into a rap song, as ultra chants are creative and have some musicality to them. But that\u2019s where anything positive I have to say about this song ends. The rest of this song is a horny mess. The featured artists, Rich the Kid, Ty Dolla $ign, and Playboi Carti deliver pretty average verses, with Playboi Carti\u2019s being the \u201chighlight\u201d of the performances. The real critique I have with this song is Kanye\u2019s verse. Apart from it just being a bad verse in general (the flow sucks, it sounds like a rambling middle-aged guy), the lyrics are equally as terrible. Kanye goes on to say: \u201cNow I’m Ye-Kelly, bitch, now, I’m Bill Cosby, bitch\/Now, I’m Puff Daddy rich, that’s ‘Me Too’ me rich\/Why she say she sucked my dick?\/Then she say she ain’t sucked my dick\/She gon’ take it up the ass, like a ventriloquist\u201d. Good one Ye. Of course, misogyny is nothing new in Rap music, especially current Trap, but there\u2019s a difference in bragging about how many women you can have sex with and basically saying \u201cdon\u2019t believe rape victims, go R-Kelly\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idolization and encouragement of this level of violence towards women is exactly the level of authoritarianism fascism imposes on repressed groups, as this quote explains: \u201cFascist states are more centralized and nationalistic than any of their predecessors, but their prejudices against minorities were (and are) nothing new. In fact, they were advertised as a return to a better \u2014 and in a modern context, simpler \u2014 time. Alfred Rosenberg, a convicted Nazi, called for ‘the emancipation of women from the women\u2019s emancipation movement,’ seeking to subjugate women in the name of returning to a supposed natural order of things\u201d (The Phillipian). Fascism seeks to \u201crestore\u201d the world to it\u2019s \u201cnatural order\u201d, in this case placing women beneath men. Fascism is, at its core, a yearning to return to the glory days of the Holy Roman empire, where strict social hierarchies existed and thrived. Even the video for the song<\/a> (which I\u2019m pretty sure is AI generated) shows mostly white skinheads violently attacking each other like a pack of wolves. The idolization of brutal and savage violence is exactly what Fascism thrives on, \u201cHypermasculinity [the perception of violence as manly] isn\u2019t just a favorite tool of fascists. It is a mindset that helps enable them to seize power, to begin with\u201d (The Phillipian). <\/p>\n\n\n\n


This song went number 1 on Billboard by the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s shock value\u201d \u201cKanye’s Bipolar\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not that deep bro\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure, it definitely is for shock value, and yes, Kanye is bipolar, and yes, it may not be that deep. Besides, it’s just lyrics and rhythm, and art is subjective. Shock value has always been a part of art, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be harmful. Maybe this is the reaction Kanye wants out of me though. I’m also not denying that Kanye’s mental health issues don’t affect what he says and creates, but at a certain point, that can’t be an excuse anymore. This is not to diminish people struggling with Bipolar disorder, but if the people around Kanye actually care about him, they would try to help instead of letting him continue to spiral down this path. And perhaps it\u2019s not that deep. Besides, it\u2019s not like we currently have a proto-fascist government actively stripping women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people of their rights, with the biggest campaign donor\/de facto president doing a Nazi salute during the inauguration, right? It’s all too telling that this song and this album were such a huge success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The infamous Elon Musk salute\/\/Image courtesy of France 24<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I know plenty of people who listened to this song and Vultures 1<\/em>, but who are definitely not far-right and were just listening to it because “it goes hard.” I can see that, but that’s also the issue. Kids listen to this stuff because it sounds cool, and Fascist Rap, along with other forms of media that a lot of young men consume, like The Joe Rogen Experience, Andrew Tate videos, and Adin Ross streams, is indoctrinating these kids into far-right ideology. Rogen and Ross both had Trump on their shows, praising him and sucking up to whatever he said. Vultures 1<\/em> is yet another example of how the far-right has infiltrated every aspect of our media, including our music. If this song came out in say, 1930s Italy, the chorus would be blaring at Mussolini’s rallies and speeches. Replace a few of the lyrics with more outwardly political and racial ideology and you’d have a bunch of blonde-hair blue-eyed Germans chanting this in Pariser Platz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Trump and popular streamer Adin Ross\/\/Image courtesy of Northeastern Global News<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This song did have the displeasure of being memeified to death though, with the notorious \u201cTik Tok Rizz Party\u201d video. If you don\u2019t know what it is, just look it up and you\u2019ll understand why the song fell out of favor with many people. Despite the song’s sudden demise, “Carnival” still charted number 1 on Billboard, along with many other songs off of Vultures 1<\/em>. This song is a modern fascist anthem, adapting the masculine chants and energy felt in fascist music and parades of the 30s. If we continue to push these neo-fascists to number 1 on the charts, we may be indoctrinating young, impressionable people, especially boys, to participate in this social and political movements, whether or not they’re listening to the lyrics, the message imbeds itself within them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s no secret that Kanye West is a raving neo-fascist. I\u2019m not here to explain the comments he made in 2023 regarding black people, Jewish people, and other comments praising fascist dictators. We all know this. I don\u2019t need to explain it. I\u2019m here to talk about one of the worst albums of 2024, Vultures […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1559,"featured_media":6640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[155,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-album-reviews","category-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/files\/2025\/01\/Screenshot-2025-01-21-at-9.26.48-PM-2.png?fit=1286%2C1532&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa7fJU-1IZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1559"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6633"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6661,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6633\/revisions\/6661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}