![]() The producer who once put Freeway and Mos Def on the same track now has Roddy Ricch and Jay Electronica on the same album. Having help from longtime collaborator Mike Dean and new friends like Playboi Carti and Baby Keem, Kanye carries much of the rapping on Donda while still getting vocal support from The Weeknd, Jay-Z, and Kid Cudi. And while Pac, Dylan, and Stevie didn’t do it on their own, clearly neither did the billionaire superstar who’s been plenty busy releasing shoes and running for office. In this sense, it took Kanye 44 years to make Donda, even if the studio dates say otherwise. Kanye’s relentless work ethic, constant creativity, and ability to edit and refine have made him into one of the most productive and most prolific artists of his era. The in-the-moment honesty of Ye likewise appears, while uplifting narratives heard on Kids See Ghosts and Jesus is King direct the messaging.Ī post shared by Boardroom showed me on his computer and there’s something like 2,000 songs at least on there that have never been released,” former YEEZY GM Jon Wexler shared during a conversation with Boardroom on Twitter Spaces earlier this year. Donda delights with the tongue-in-cheek commentary of his first three albums, dives deep with the pain and vulnerability of 808s & Heartbreak and MBDTF, and challenges rhyme schemes through abrasive beats best exemplified on Watch the Throne and Yeezus.Įven a compilation like Cruel Summer represents lessons learned, like the power of adding an unexpected feature weeks past preview as a way to take a track over the top. Whether dream-chasing or stream-chasing, the project pulls from Kanye’s entire education since starting out as a producer in 1996 and releasing The College Dropout in 2004. If MBDTF was a bouquet, Donda is a buffet. He described the project as a bouquet of flowers to his fans, carefully curating the most liked elements of his previous projects into one polished triumph. But he’s no stranger to opposition Kanye released quite possibly his most acclaimed album ever, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, amidst the Taylor Swift VMA fallout and Drake’s meteoric ascent. Still, he was able to release 27 tracks of sprawling sound that touch on everything from his public divorce, polarizing presidential campaign, and his faith.īecause of all this weight, the timing for Kanye to put out his most extensive record seemingly couldn’t be worse. Today, it’s not just that Kanye came through with the modern equivalent of an applauded double album - it’s that he did it in 2021.Īt 44 years old and admittedly more focused on fashion than music for roughly a decade, Kanye West the rapper was pronounced past his prime three albums ago, and he probably is. Classic rock royalty like Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Bruce Springsteen have dropped triumphant double albums with one main mic, while Wu-Tang Clan, Led Zeppelin, Outkast, Pink Floyd, and The Beatles all dropped celebrated two-disc projects in collective form at the peaks of their powers. In hip-hop, it’s generally taken an all-time legend like 2Pac and The Notorious BIG to go for the classic dirty double as a solo artist and stick the landing. Aiming for abundance like Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life or Prince’s Sign O’ the Times, rap’s most rebellious resident is entering rarified territory when it comes to expansive song selection. In a genre where Nas’ 10-track Illmatic is considered a triumph and Jay-Z’s 112 minutes of The Blueprint 2 is measured as a miss, Kanye has avoided the long play format or daunting double album for the course of his career.Ĭoming in at 27 tracks, Donda is not only long-awaited, it’s long in length. Despite current trends, history has long suggested that short albums are critically smart, even if not as financially viable digitally.
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