Donda: A Journey

“Donda. Donda. Donda.” These are the first words that ring out as listeners press play on Donda, Kanye West’s tenth studio album, recently released on August 29th. The project is West’s longest album to date, with 27 songs and a runtime of 1 hour and 49 minutes. Donda follows Jesus is King, Kanye West’s gospel album, released back in 2019. The release of West’s new album, though, has had a pretty rough rollout, to say the least. The album was originally supposed to premiere all the way back on July 24th, 2020, during West’s failed attempt at a presidential run. Similar to his rollouts with previous albums Yeezus and Life of Pablo, Kanye declined to drop it on the 24th. Nothing was said by Kanye, and eventually, fans, although disappointed, were able to move past it and just accept that the album would not be dropping anytime soon. Then, in July of this year, there were rumblings of Kanye starting his album rollout again. Those rumors turned out to be true, as it was confirmed West would be hosting an album listening party at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, with claims that the album would be dropping afterward at midnight. However, in true Kanye fashion, the album once again was not released. Two weeks after the first listening party, he held another at the same stadium (which he lived in for his two-week hiatus). The album was promised to come out after that event as well, but, lo and behold, there was nothing released. Three weeks later, on August 27th, Kanye held a third listening party, this time at Soldier Field in Chicago. The album finally materialized on streaming services at 8 AM on August 29th, making it a little over a year since he first announced it. During this crazy rollercoaster of an album, the conflict between Drake and Kanye was also reignited. This began back in 2018, with Drake accusing Kanye of leaking information about his secret love child, Adonis. They facilitated a tentative truce for a few years, until recently, when Drake took shots at Kanye on Trippie Redd’s new song Betrayal. Kanye then fired back by posting Drake’s home address. Some fans think they are seriously beefing and are going to continue dissing each other, while others think it’s all in fun to promote each of their new albums. Now, with Drake’s new album Certified Lover Boy out, many fans are eager to go back and forth over which album is better and see which album sells more.