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Every Song on Kanye West’s ‘Donda’ Album, Ranked: Critic’s Pick

The star-studded project named after Kanye's late mother finally arrived on Aug. 29. 

By Michael Saponara

Michael Saponara

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Only Kanye West could rent out Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta for weeks at a time and also live there in the process of making an album. After pump-faking the release of Donda  twice, Kanye returned on Aug. 26 by rebuilding his childhood home at midfield of Soldier Field in his hometown of Chicago for another listening event.

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After yet another delay, the elusive Donda album finally made its way onto streaming services Sunday morning (Aug. 29). Ye’s 10th LP boasts star-studded features that include Jay-Z, Baby Keem, Pusha T, Kid Cudi, The Weeknd, Lil Baby, Travis Scott, Lil Yachty, Lil Durk, Young Thug, Jay Electronica and many more collaborators helping execute Yeezy’s latest vision on what he’s dubbed the “album of the life.”

Bringing the best out of a phalanx of collaborators and special guests has always been a gift of Kanye’s throughout his career, and he puts it on display once again with the superstar cast bridging multiple generations across 27 total tracks.

Kanye West's 'Donda' Has Finally Arrived and Fans Are Loving It: See the Best Reactions

After sifting through the censored CDQ version of Donda on streaming services, check out our song rankings for the LP below.

26. “Tell the Vision” (feat. Pop Smoke)

A different version of “Tell the Vision” originally landed on Pop Smoke’s posthumous Faith album. Here, Pusha T’s verse is cut out and Pop’s vocals are altered along with Kanye tweaking the beat. Yeezy gives a salute to Pop, which serves as more of an interlude or bridge than a legit track from the fallen Brooklyn drill soldier.

25. “No Child Left Behind” (feat. Vory)

This is the proper album closer. Anyone that watched the stream or was on social media during the second Atlanta listening party will have to associate “No Child Left Behind” with the sight of Kanye — or a Kanye stunt double — ascending into the heavens on an ultralight beam through the open roof of Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

24. “God Breathed” (feat. Vory)

One of the more gospel-leaning records on Donda . “GBOT” is a forgettable deep cut in the long run of the project as it gets swallowed up by other glossier records and colossal stars lending their talents to the LP. Although, it is funny to hear Kanye compare God being the father to an episode of Maury .

23. “24” (Feat. Vory)

By this point on the album, Donda is transitioning into a more peaceful finish. Kanye is repeatedly letting the listeners know everything is going to be okay and he’s going to keep conquering the obstacles life has thrown his way, whether it’s the loss of his mother, relationship troubles with Kim Kardashian or something else. As he rapped on “Reborn,” keep moving forward.

22. “Ok Ok, Pt. 2” (feat. Fivio Foreign, Rooga & Shenseea)

In another part two edition, Kanye enlists his first female collaborator on the record with rising dancehall star Shenseea. But it’s the original that won’t be topped, thanks to a standout feature from Lil Yachty.

21. “Jonah” (feat. Vory & Lil Durk)

After missing the private jet to put his melodic rhymes on Donda in July, Lil Durk made up for it in a major way by making the final cut for his first collaboration with the Chicago legend on “Jonah.” Vory’s croon pops up on another track as Kanye basically turned the Houston artist’s voice into another instrument for him to deploy throughout the project. It’s probably no coincidence to hear Kanye condemning “smoking on an opp’s pack” around the same time Durk said he would stop name-dropping the dead in his music.

20. “Donda”

Kanye looks inward and mixes in an inspirational speech from the late Donda West, as Kanye reflects on his parents’ relationship and his origin story with help from the Sunday Service choir. Erasing the assist from G.O.O.D. Music president Pusha T ends up lowering the track’s ceiling.

19. “Remote Control” (feat. Young Thug)

Another unexpected treat for listeners has Young Thug reuniting with Kanye on a record. Thugger steals the show, gliding through the smooth production without a worry in the world, boasting about his riches while Yeezy mocks how futuristic the world has become with remote controls and hoverboards. With that said, “Remote” is mildly disappointing, as it won’t be one of Donda ‘s most memorable cuts.

18. “New Again” (feat. Chris Brown)

Kanye brings listeners on an uptempo psychedelic trip throughout “New Again.” With all Yeezy and Chris Brown have been through, they know a thing or two about shedding their skin and feeling new again. The house-influenced “New Again” would’ve been a hidden gem on Donda that was sure to get your head-bobbing if Yeezy left alone the edition fans heard in Atlanta with help from Ty Dolla $ign.

17. “Heaven and Hell” 

Kicked off with a Jennifer Lopez “Jenny From the Block” sample, “Heaven and Hell” is rare solo Kanye cut on Donda . Yeezy rides the thunderous production which provides one of the most exhilarating drops shortly after the one-minute mark. If only Kanye channeled his “No More Parties in L.A.” flow, this could’ve easily been a classic cut.

16. “Junya, Pt. 2” (feat. Playboi Carti & Ty Dolla $ign)

This serves as a breath of fresh air with Ty Dolla $ign tapping into his rapping bag with ease. While Ty, unfortunately, got cut off from “New Again,” he gets his shine here.

15. “Jesus Lord, Pt. 2” (feat. Jay Electronica & The LOX)

The final track of what could’ve been a double-disc effort from Yeezy. This version was played at the second Atlanta listening session as The LOX continued their hot streak coming off of their dominating Verzuz victory over Dipset. Kanye just couldn’t cut them off altogether, it just wouldn’t have been right.

14. “Keep My Spirit Alive” (feat. Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine & KayCyy)

Griselda and Kanye West is an unlikely combination, but he once again made it all work. “Keep My Spirit Alive” is tied together by the tuneful singing of YZY Sound artist KayCyy. The track most likely stems from when Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine, and Benny The Butcher paid Kanye’s Wyoming ranch a visit in 2020.

13. “Jesus Lord” (feat. Jay Electronica)

One of the most powerful tracks on the entire album. Kanye opens up about the pain he’s gone through with his divorce and the never-healing wound of the loss of his mother. Bars like “Suicidal thoughts got you wondering what’s up there” or “If I die tonight, will I see her in the afterlife” are sure to pierce any listener’s soul. And that was just part one, as elusive rap superhero Jay Electronica provides reinforcements in the second half of the nine-minute marathon. The cut is capped off by a message from Larry Hoover Jr., who thanked Kanye for trying to help his incarcerated father and pleaded for his freedom.

12. “Jail” (feat. Jay-Z & Francis and the Lights)

“This might be the return of The Throne,” Jay-Z raps. The most anticipated reunion in all of hip-hop takes place on Donda  as Kanye reconnects with big brother Hov. “Hova and Yeezus, like Moses and Jesus,” Jay continues to add to the hype of the former Roc-A-Fella running mates teaming up. While Watch the Throne  remains the gold standard, there could be more in store as social media personality turned Donda insider Justin LaBoy claimed a sequel project from Ye and Jay was on the way for later in 2021.

11. “Lord I Need You”

One of the tracks with stronger religious themes with Kanye being a man of God. The softer track features co-production from Wheezy and serves as an angelic transition into the final chapter of Donda.  This won’t be anyone’s favorite, but also not anyone’s least favorite.

10. “Moon” (feat. Don Toliver & Kid Cudi)

After publicly saying he wasn’t on the original version of Donda , Kanye gave his close friend Kid Cudi a call to have him fly into Atlanta and contribute to multiple tracks on the finished album. Cudder and Cactus Jack’s Don Toliver trade croons as “Moon” carries the middle portion of Donda .

9. “Junya” (feat. Playboi Carti)

An incredible three-song stretch of Donda  is capped off with “Junya.” Yeezy joins forces with one of the leaders of the new school in Playboi Carti and doesn’t flinch. Kanye gives Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee bucks a shout-out for winning the championship and has smoke for anyone (possibly Drake or Nas) who wanted to invade his release day. “Move out the way of my release,” he raps.

8. “Jail, Pt. 2” (feat. DaBaby)

The Chicago-bred billionaire sent shockwaves through the industry when DaBaby and Marilyn Manson joined him on the remake of his childhood home’s porch at Soldier field for the third public Donda listening party. Baby replaces and Jay-Z, which is usually an impossible task, but gives an A+ effort with a hard-hitting verse addressing the public thrashing he’s received in recent weeks. The Charlotte native’s assist is one of the album’s premier guest appearances and it’s over a beat he would never rap on if it wasn’t for Kanye.

7. “Come to Life”

Kanye warms up his vocal cords and puts his singing voice to use while getting introspective with a look inward. Sadness sets in as Yeezy expresses regret with possible love notes to his wife Kim Kardashian West and fades into the distance with an inspiring piano solo letting everyone know he’s finally free.

6. “Praise God” (feat. Travis Scott & Baby Keem)

Kanye reunites with Travis Scott for the first time since “Wash Us in the Blood” for the spacey track. Baby Keem, who was an Atlanta mainstay the past two weeks, lets us know he’s still outside pandemic be damned over the ominous organ-laden production.

5. “Ok Ok” (feat. Lil Yachty & Rooga)

A bonafide Donda standout track. The Chicago-bred mogul looks inward and professes he’s not okay at the moment. Yeezy examines the rap game admitting he’s inspired again and recognizes those trying to copy his blueprint all the while calling out artists for following trends and not standing out.

Lil Yachty provides a welcomed feature, which makes for a full-circle moment, as he got his start modeling Kanye’s Yeezy Season 3 during The Life of Pablo ‘s Madison Square Garden listening party in 2016 when he wasn’t yet a known commodity in rap. Lil Boat pays tribute to the late Juice WRLD over muffled 808s and hands the baton to underground Chicago native Rooga, who takes aim at those who don’t want to see him winning.

4. “Believe What I Say”

Lauryn Hill and her label come through in the clutch with the “Doo Wop” sample clearance. Kanye actually teased “Believe What I Say” in 2020 while enjoying a boat ride. The soulful cut makes for a welcomed addition to the  Donda  fold and might be a slight jab at Drake who used a similar “Doo Wop” sample on 2014’s “Draft Day.”

3. “Pure Souls” (feat. Roddy Ricch & Shenseea)

Another track, another five-star collaboration. Kanye connects with one of Compton’s finest in Roddy Ricch and emerging dancehall singer Shenseea for “Pure Souls.” While production has been crisp on recent Kanye projects, his songwriting has been where he’s faltered in the latter part of his career. “Pure Souls” features some quality writing from Yeezy as he spars with friendly enemy Drake by weaving “Mob Ties” and “God’s Plan” into his rhymes, which is sure to grab the 6 God’s attention heading into CLB .

2. “Hurricane” (feat. Lil Baby & The Weeknd)

A fan-favorite from the shelved Yandhi era in 2018. “Hurricane” has gone through a series of evolutions and reached close to its final form in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium when Kanye showed off the track polished with The Weeknd’s intoxicating tenor on the chorus instead of himself, which takes the nearly three-year-old song to another level on the Richter scale.

1. “Off the Grid” (feat. Playboi Carti & Fivio Foreign)

Whoever thought there would be a Kanye West, Playboi Carti and Fivio Foreign collaboration in 2021 should probably play the lottery too. Fivio helps make it one of Donda ‘s best efforts. He pours his soul into this verse and doesn’t leave a bar unaccounted for.

It’s almost as if he knew how important this verse could be in catapulting him to rap’s mainstream, which is something a Kanye feature was powerful enough to do at one point. As one of the torchbearers of Brooklyn’s drill scene following Pop Smoke’s death, Fivio Foreign didn’t take this moment for granted and it showed in the final product.

A reinvigorated Kanye taps into another frequency and ends up adding his best rapping verse since The Life of Pablo  to take the track to a superior fan-favorite level.

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Lil Yachty Explains How He Helped To Secure Kid Cudi’s ‘DONDA’ Feature

With assistance from the rapper vory..

It seems that Lil Yachty is to credit for one of the features on Kanye West’s new album DONDA : the vocals of Kid Cudi on the serene single “Moon.”

Yachty, who is featured on “Ok Ok” himself, explained how the collaboration came about while playing Skate 3 during a Twitch stream.

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by TeamKanyeDaily (@teamkanyedaily)

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Every Artist and Producer Kanye West Worked With on Donda Album

After numerous delays, Kanye West has finally released his 10th studio album,  Donda , today. The 27-track collection is stacked with over 30 guest features—more than any of his previous projects.

Today (Aug. 29), ’Ye unveiled the long-awaited album, which was previewed at four different listening sessions—one private and three public—before its arrival. Among the artists featured includes  Jay-Z , Don Toliver , Kid Cudi , Fivio Foreign , Lil Baby , The Weeknd , Pop Smoke , Travis Scott , Roddy Ricch , Jadakiss , Styles P , Sheek Louch , Jay Electronica , Conway The Machine , Westside Gunn , Chris Brown , Lil Durk , Baby Keem , Playboi Carti , Lil Yachty , Vory , DaBaby , ’Ye's Sunday Service Choir and more.

Additionally,  Mike Dean , 88-Keys , Boi-1da , DJ Khalil , Dem Jointz , Audi & Wheezy and  Ronny J  are a few of the producers who assisted Kanye with the beats for the project.

The rollout for the album has been a wild ride. The Chicago-bred rapper-producer i nitially announced a July 24, 2020 release date for the LP , but that didn't happen. A year later, fans were given hope that they'd receive the offering, but the release of  Donda  didn't happen. Nevertheless, Kanye hosted two sold-out listening events at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on July 22 and Aug. 4 . The 44-year-old artist even hunkered down at the stadium in ATL and created a makeshift bedroom for himself so he could finish recording the album uninterrupted.

Kanye also gave fans an inside look at the creative process by livestreaming himself in his living quarters. A view of his daily activities, including him sleeping and exercising  were all part of the show.

Before releasing Donda , Kanye also  held another listening event at Soldier Field in his hometown of Chicago on Aug. 26. Among the highlights included DaBaby rapping his verse on “Jail, Part. 2,” Kim Kardashian appearing onstage in a white Balenciaga Couture wedding dress and ’Ye setting himself on fire in a blazing stunt. Yes, it was lit.

Check out all the artists appearing on Donda below.

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Kanye West Obsesses About Jesus, Kim, His Mother, Himself and Drake in Overstuffed, Fascinating ‘Donda’: Album Review

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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“God’s not finished,” Kanye West sings repeatedly at the end of one of his new songs, “24.” Being made in God’s image, West very much relates to that; he doesn’t like being done with things, either. Yet here we have the miracle, a true, blue spectacle, of a finished “Donda,” the album that until this weekend seemed poised to challenge Guns N’ Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” as the most mythologically delayed major music release ever. Unless he’s going to pull a “Life of Pablo” on us, it’s really done — no more tweaks and do-overs to put in front of a series of the largest focus groups of all time.

With the album clocking in at a length of one hour and 47 minutes, with no fewer than 27 songs (although the last four are effectively alternate-version bonus tracks), there’s a lot to digest here… admittedly more than can be adequately coughed up as a day-1 reaction. What’s immediately clear is the inadequacy of the title to encapsulate West’s obsessions here. He returns just often enough to his late and beloved mother to almost plausibly claim concept-album status, but she has to share roughly equal space on his 2021 mantle of obsessions with Jesus, Kim Kardashian , himself and, naturally, Drake, who seems to be haunting our hero more than Satan ever could. (In answer to the question, “What would Jesus do?,” we have a pretty clear answer: He’d suddenly rush his album out to beat the devil’s.)

On a purely musical level, “Donda” is close to unassailable; any time spent tarrying on its release has been time well-wasted. It’d be hard to contend that an album that lasts nearly two hours exactly flies by, but until it gets to those last four completely superfluous remixes, it’s a collection that never comes close to wearing out its welcome, alternating the brooding and the banging with a well-honed sense of dynamics. That goes for the way gospel touches are more subtly integrated than in “Jesus Is King,” and how he can instantly veer from the Sunday Service choir-augmented “24” to the completely mechanical “Remote Control,” and at other times work hip-hop portent for all it’s worth in numbers like “Heaven and Hell” and then arrive at something as cheerful as his terrific collab with Roddy Ricch, “Pure Souls,” one of a few songs on the album that uses an organ not for gospel effect.

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“Believe What I Say” has the kind of bass line that immediately makes it a great party song, even if lines like “Go on and get your best attorney” and “Lil’ baby Jesus ain’t laughing, no” may not fit anyone’s idea of club fodder. And he can pull out a pleasingly genre-crossing surprise like “Jail,” a highly melodic pop-alt-rock song with power chords and anthemic chorus lines that somebody like Imagine Dragons might give their dragons’ eye teeth for.

Let it be said here that we’re talking about the “Jail” that occurs near the beginning of the album and not the “Jail Pt. 2” that comes near the end, with a remix that brings on as featured guests Marilyn Manson and DaBaby , probably the two most widely despised figures in music in 2021 so far, for the former rocker’s rape and sexual assault allegations and lawsuits and the latter rapper’s less and less repentant-seeming homophobia. Conceptually, it makes a kind of sense, maybe, in West’s biblically informed worldview — as well as in just a completely trolling worldview — to write a song that deals with original sin and backsliding, sort of, and then bring on two figures who could certainly rival the Apostle Paul as “the worst of all sinners.” But conceptual hubris aside… In a year in which there are so many urgent topical subjects someone wanting to zone in on the zeitgeist could have written about, what does it say about this album that the only moments on “Donda” that speak directly to Where We Are Now in 2021 are the verses in which DaBaby gets defensive about his gay-bashing and AIDS-shaming? “That food that you took off my table / You know that feed my daughters, huh?,” DaBaby asks, angrily appealing to his LGBTQ critics to have pity for his diminished income before affirming: “Only thing I did to you / Was always keep it real and true.”

But then again, the conflict between Christian humility and utter hubris is a recurring one on the album, though West is more often than not seeing pride as a feature, not a flaw. He’s famously a subscriber to the so-called prosperity gospel rampant for decades in some circles of Pentecostalism — the spirit of Joel Osteen is not absent here — which makes for some almost comic juxtapositions. Guest rapper Styles of the Lox gets to the heart of this in a rhyme on the epic remix of “Jesus Lord” that ends the album: “Now I’m talkin’ to Jesus / Real shallow ****, probably pray for a gray coupe / Maybe the Lykan or a mansion out in the Seychelles.” (The expletive is deleted on the album itself; all curse words, including the N-word, have been edited out, making the “clean” version the only version.) In “Heaven and Hell,” it’s West himself quickly jumping from “We on Bezos, we get payrolls / Trips to Lagos, connect like LEGOs” to “Burn false idols, Jesus’ disciples” literally without the time to skip a heartbeat.

And West is definitely not looking to reach out to Drake to attend Sunday Service. His Canuck nemesis never gets mentioned by name, of course, but he’s called out in spirit often enough: “Move out of the way of my release / Why can’t losers never lose in peace,” West warns in “Junya” (otherwise a tribute to Junya Watanabe, the Japanese designer), and in “Ok Ok,” it’s “You wanna come in and play with the G.O.A.T. — bow,” he commands. That’s presumably not to the throne of the Father but, as Jay-Z puts it on his verse on “Jail,” “the return of The Throne / Hova and Yeezus, like Moses and Jesus.” Well, you can’t spell Yahweh without Y-E.

Suffice it to say that while “Jesus Is King” won an award from the Gospel Music Association, “Donda,” for all its frequent godly concerns, probably won’t, much as his belief system may indeed still overlap with his evangelical brethren. Some of that has to do with the featured artists, who are not quite so adherent to the faith as West continues to be. Take Lil Yachty, whose rap on “Ok Ok” brags, “I just took her over the mountain with my finger,” a nice complement to the sly oral-sex reference in “Believe What I Say.” Anyone who worried, like Drake recently did with his tongue apparently in cheek, that West might never return to “secular” music can rest easy here — he has, although the 25-plus guests on the album sometimes go a little further than the star. West is in something like the place Bob Dylan was, perhaps, when he followed two strictly evangelical albums with the more divided concerns of the transitional “Shot of Love.” On “Donda,” West is not afraid to take a lot of shots of irreverence.

But some of the guests, certainly, are down with the mission, like the previously none-too-sacred-leaning Weeknd, who brings out an unknown gospel side on “Hurricane” with a chorus as ineffable as any on his albums’ that declares, “Finally free, found the God in me / And I want you to see, I can walk on water.” (A declaration of religious devotion, or a preview of the Weeknd’s next VMAs production number?) Also of note, West is not so tied to specifically Christian belief that he’s unwilling to allow equal time for the Islamic and other references that come from the album’s two Jays: Jay-Z (who suggests “pray five times a day” on “Jail”) and, at much greater length, from Jay Electronica (“My bars is like the pyramid temples of Pacal Votan / As sure as the DOJ confirmed Ezekiel’s wheel / I could change the world like Yacub with two pieces of steel” — well, of course).

At the risk of sacrilege, “Kim Is King” could be a subtitle for the parts of the album that tease our understanding of what their fractured relationship was, is and may be… as further flaunted by the faux-wedding the Wests went through in front of millions of streaming viewers Thursday night in Chicago. “Lord I Need You” starts as a gospel song, then quickly becomes a confessional about his marriage… maybe written earlier, when it wasn’t yet to the point of a legal filing (“Startin’ to feel like you ain’t been happy for me lately, darlin’,” he sings, somewhat belatedly), or maybe in the hopes of a present-day reconciliation, based either in reality or keeping us intrigued. “But you came here to show that you still in love with me,” he asserts, in a line ripped right out of Friday morning’s headlines, seemingly.

“Lord I Need You” is not the only ADHD song on the album that starts as an anthem of devotion and then trips off in an entirely different direction. So is “Jesus Lord,” which gets off to a Christian start with West, then gets into a different kind of mystic with Jay Electronica, and finally ends, movingly but incongruously, with a spoken-word coda by the son of Larry Hoover, one of the imprisoned figures that West went to beseech then-president Trump about in 2018. It’s three perfectly good songs in one — but the sort of subject-changing thing that makes “Donda” sometimes feel like it includes 81 songs, not 27.

West does stay focused for at least one complete song, though, and it might be the best thing he’s ever done — certainly it’s the most beautiful: “Come to Life,” which utterly drops the pride — yes, he can do it — to focus on depression and humility, accompanied by cascading, overlapping pianos and guitar chords straight off a pure pop album… a great one. West will probably never sing a less proud couplet in his life than: “Brought a gift to Northie, all she wants is Nikes / This is not about me, God is still alive, so I’m free.” When the world’s most famous Adidas guy can sing that, you can believe in holy transformation.

On “God Breathed,” one of the very best songs, the album’s MYP guest, the singer Vory, stands in for West when he sings: “They hearts are filled with greed / Okay, now they want the old me.” The thing is, for worse and (mostly) better, we’ve got the old West on “Donda.” Sunday Service is present and accounted for, but we’re at Friday night services when he’s reverting to self-glorifying couplets that err on the side of corniness, if not sin, like: “Not Wakanda but Wakanda is kinda like what we ’bout to make / And who gon’ make it? Kan’, duh.” It’s a kind of comfort food, really, to have him so firmly in his boastful zone… and it doesn’t necessarily cancel out the communion wafers.

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Five months ago, Alejandro Rodriguez-Dawson was holed up in a cramped room in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium recording the likes of Kanye West, Kid Cudi, and Fivio Foreign for DONDA . Now, he has four Grammy nominations and a gold plaque from that time and remembers the moment Ye officially welcomed him into the fold.

“In his own words, he was going to say, ‘We found a hell of a tracking engineer,’ but he’s on his gospel tip so he said, ‘We found a heaven of a tracking engineer.’ I was like, ‘That’s the greatest compliment ever. Thank you so much,’” Rodriguez-Dawson told REVOLT .

In this installment of “Studio Sessions,” the Grammy-nominated engineer discusses how a one-way ticket to Atlanta got him to work on DONDA , Wayna Morris’ superhuman recording process, and recording Lil Keed quicker than it took for his friends to roll a blunt. Peep the chat below.

Wanya Morris is a legend from Boys II Men and most people aren’t privileged to see a legend like that in action. What is his creative process like?

He’s an actual singer singer. When you record rappers and newer R&B singers, they’re not doing a lot of layers or spending a lot of time on the vocal recording itself. He’s a perfectionist with an incredible ear, so the recording process takes a lot of time and is very tedious on how he does his stacks. He has a Grammy for the year I was born, so he’s been doing this forever. He knows exactly what he’s looking for. He’s also a pretty good producer, as well.

What does he need in the studio to make his best music?

He doesn’t make a lot of specific requests. Every time we’ve worked, we’ve worked out of his personal studio, so everything he wants is already there how he wants it. When the pandemic hit, we recorded out of his home studio. There’s nothing abnormal about it. He just wants a vibe and to work . He’s a fun person to be around. He’s always cracking jokes.

What’s the most impressive thing he’s done in the studio?

I’ve never met any singer as good as him. His harmonies match perfectly. He’s listening for subtle nuances in every take. If you’re doing a dub and have to stack it three times, the nuances, tones and how your mouth is shaped when you sing it all has to be the same. It’s not human how he does it (laughs).

What are the funniest moments you’ve had in the studio with him?

He makes the funniest noises. He’s almost like a cartoon. We did a voiceover for a cartoon and he killed that shit. He can be vulgar at times, which throws you off because you’re thinking Boyz II Men are clean cut.

In 2020, you worked with Lil Keed in the studio. How’d you assist with his music?

It was pretty easy because I’ve been recording Strick from YSL for years, and YSL artists all have the same process of how they record . They’ll write on the spot and then freestyle. They’ll do line-for-line and then punch in. I was already prepped for that style when Keed came in, so we knocked it out quick. When we worked together, it was for a feature . We left, went to get Backwoods, came back, and pulled up the same time his Uber pulled up. He was sleep in the back of the Uber, his manager woke him up, and then he was on 10. I had to hurry up and get ready. While they were rolling up the Backwood, he and I were knocking out the verse. It probably took 15 minutes. They weren’t done rolling up and he was already out the booth.

How did you go from working with Wanya to being involved in the making of Kanye West’s DONDA ?

It was only a couple of months. Wanya and I started working again this year when he started hosting a talent show on his Instagram Live. He flew out a bunch of great singers to Vegas to get on a song together. A few months later, I got the call to work on DONDA .

What was your role in the making of DONDA ?

I was a recording engineer. I got the call from a producer named Fya Man. I’ve been working with him for four years. They were in Vegas and he gave me the call. They were in Vegas for four days and that’s when I got brought on the team. They went out to Atlanta, the album was supposed to drop , and then it didn’t drop. So, he called me like, ‘I can’t guarantee I can get you back in here, but you should come to Atlanta just in case.’ I brought a one-way ticket, was on stand-by for a day and a half, and then I got another call to go back in. From then, I was in there recording the writers and featured artists. On the day of the livestream, Mike Dean suggested I record Ye for the livestream. After the livestream, that was my first time working with Ye. I recorded a punch-in with him when we were in Vegas. When we were in Atlanta, I was there for a week and didn’t record him. During the livestream, that was my first time recording him song after song after song . He saw how fast I was moving and he was fucking with me. He told me, ‘I want you to finish this album with me,’ so I stuck around until we finished it up. In his own words, he was going to say, ‘We found a hell of a tracking engineer,’ but he’s on his gospel tip so he said, ‘We found a heaven of a tracking engineer.’ I was like, ‘That’s the greatest compliment ever. Thank you so much (laughs).’

Who did you get to record for DONDA ?

I got to record Kid Cudi , which was probably the top one for me because his music got me through so much. I got to record Baby Keem, Don Toliver, Fivio Foreign, Lil Yachty, and a few others.

What was the busiest recording night for you?

You can see it on the livestream. You had Steve Lacy, Vic Mensa, Chance [the Rapper] and Yachty in the studio, and some of them weren’t even on the album. They were there part of the creative process.

Were there any major differences with DONDA between the first Atlanta listening and the second one?

Yeah, you can hear the differences. There were added verses and verses that were taken off. On the Chicago one, verses got replaced for other artists . There were other changes we were doing that didn’t make it.

Are there any parts on songs that are near and dear to your heart?

‘Moon’ because of how monumental it was. But, also ‘Come To Life.’ There was a sample you hear over the speaking in tongues, he had that. We threw it in there and it fit perfectly. When we played it back, I got goosebumps and knew this was one of those moments. Also, ‘Life of the Party.’ Being able to meet and record Andre [3000] was one of those things that was the top of the top. He’s a unicorn in this game. Being able to meet him and have conversations to him is near and dear to my heart.

What do you need in the studio to do your best work?

Preferably, I like to be working in an actual studio (laughs). It’s hard to get good rough mixes when you’re in a random room. You have headphones in an untreated room with all of these reverberations and stuff like that. If I had it my way, we’d be working in an acoustically treated studio, but that’s not always the case. I also would need a working Macbook with all the tools and plugins I need.

What do you have coming up in 2022?

Right now, I’m remodeling my studio Junxion Sounds in Vegas. I’m actually executive producing an album we’re capturing the behind-the-scenes of. A lot of people don’t really look to Vegas as a music city outside of the Vegas strip.

Review: Kanye West reeks of desperation on dispiriting, exhausting ‘Donda’

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Kanye West, like so many of the dubious Trump-era thinkers he’s aligned himself with during the last half-decade, likes to suggest that he’s just asking questions.

Questions about freedom. Questions about celebrity. Questions about race and gender and redemption that other people are too scared to ask in a woke America.

But if that was ever true, it isn’t really anymore.

For years — but especially throughout the lengthy and chaotic rollout of his 10th solo album, “Donda,” which finally dropped on Sunday morning in the wake of his polarizing embrace of the former president, a failed presidential run of his own, a highly public separation from his wife and no fewer than three stadium-sized listening events — we’ve been the ones asking how far we’re willing to go with West as he ventures ever deeper into his own megalomania.

That third event, for which he invited Marilyn Manson to stand next to him at Chicago’s Soldier Field last week, wasn’t a question but an answer.

This far, West seemed to be declaring. At least this far.

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Manson is the veteran shock rocker facing multiple lawsuits over accusations of alleged sexual abuse. And Kanye was right that Manson’s presence wouldn’t dissuade people from following him (just as his MAGA hat and his infamous remarks about slavery being a choice didn’t): On Monday, spots 1 through 10 on Spotify’s closely watched U.S. Top 50 chart were filled by tracks from “Donda”; the streaming platform said the LP had set a new record for the most streams in a single day in 2021.

Why start this album review with talk of rhetoric instead of music? Because music has never seemed less central to Kanye’s enterprise than it does at the moment.

Certainly, Manson makes no significant musical contribution to “Jail” or “ Jail pt 2 ,” the pair of “Donda” tracks on which he appears — in the first case as a credited songwriter and in the second as a songwriter and featured performer alongside DaBaby, who Kanye also brought out in Chicago amid widespread criticism over homophobic comments DaBaby recently made.

For West, Manson — who sings along with his host on a couple of lines in “Jail pt 2” — is merely a symbol: a supposed fellow victim of the cancel culture that apparently keeps coming for Kanye (but so far has done nothing to slow his advance in the fashion industry that made him a billionaire).

Think about how aggrieved West must feel to have orchestrated this. Two albums ago, on 2018’s “Ye,” he used his song “ Violent Crimes ” to tell us that becoming a father to two daughters had led him to “see women as something to nurture, not something to conquer” — the lowest form of male enlightenment, sure, but still.

And now here he is, on an album named after his late mother, drafting an accused predator — precisely because of the allegations against him — to make the point that men like him — famous, rich, maligned — have suffered too greatly for their sins.

DaBaby argues the same thing — a more charitable interpretation is that we’re all sinners and that only God can forgive — in his verse in “Jail pt 2”: “I said one thing they ain’t like / Threw me out like they ain’t care for me,” he raps, “And that food that y’all took off my table / You know that feed my daughters, huh?” (Please allow these daughters to stop doing their fathers’ emotional labor.)

As with Manson, though, Kanye seems less invested in what DaBaby brings to the song than in what DaBaby represents to the world. In a since-deleted Instagram post on Sunday, West wrote that he insisted on including DaBaby’s verse because “he was the only person who said he would vote for me in public” — a quid pro quo between two artists who view themselves as among the few who get it.

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Even with 27 tracks stretched over nearly two hours, “Donda” doesn’t register as an organized aesthetic experience so much as a means of maintaining Kanye’s powerful social standing; it’s a reason to keep us talking about him as he prepares his next Yeezy collection and continues to stage whatever grand piece of TMZ theater he’s plotting with Kim Kardashian, who appeared at the end of last week’s listening event for a kind of reenactment of their 2014 wedding.

For all the time he evidently took to complete it, the album feels slapdash — a messy collection of stray thoughts about his mother, about divorce, about God, about the bipolar disorder he’s referred to as his superpower. After “Donda” dropped, he took to Instagram again to say that his label had released it without his approval, as though he hadn’t finished tinkering with it.

But maybe he was just looking for another way to create more controversy about the album (or to fend off suspicions that he was purposely getting out of Drake’s way ahead of the planned release of his new LP on Friday). Indeed, throughout “Donda’s” tortured arrival, Kanye has seemed somehow unaware that we know he’s trolling us, which would be laughable if the particulars of his pay-attention-to-me act weren’t so dispiriting. Outrage is valuable in art, and providing it has clearly been good for Kanye’s business; “Donda’s” all-but-assured debut at No. 1 will tie Eminem’s record of 10 consecutive chart-toppers. But as with Eminem — not to mention Trump since he left the White House — the provocations have taken on the stink of desperation.

So what, at last, about the music? “Donda” draws from the various Kanye eras that have come before, plus a lot more besides; it blends the harsh industrial hip-hop of “Yeezus,” the church-organ gospel of “Jesus Is King,” the gothic swagger of “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” and the bleeping electro-pop of “808s & Heartbreak.” There’s a Brooklyn drill track with Fivio Foreign (“ Off the Grid ”); a heaving R&B jam with the Weeknd (“Hurricane”); even an uptempo party song (“ Believe What I Say ”) that echoes the seemingly long-lost Kanye of exuberant mid-2000s hits like “ Stronger ” and “ Good Life .”

Some of the stuff is thrilling; some of it’s gorgeous. At this point, Kanye’s skill as a record-maker is beyond dispute, though the number of producers credited on most of these tracks — eight for “Pure Souls,” seven for “New Again” — invites speculation as to how closely involved he was in the studio this time. The stylistic range is impressive but exhausting in a way distinct from 2016’s “The Life of Pablo”; this album lacks a sense of momentum to push you from the arena-rock guitar squall of “Jail” to the throbbing club beat of “ God Breathed ” to the dense choral vocals of “ 24 ,” which means nothing builds on anything else.

West’s rapping is similarly scattershot, with potent if typically self-flattering lines about an empty $60 million home giving way to cringey dad jokes like this one from “ Lord I Need You ”: “We used to do the freak like seven days a week / It’s the best collab since Taco Bell and KFC.” (That’s two albums in a row now we’ve had to hear Kanye liken Kardashian to fast food, after his iffy Chick-fil-A shout-out on “Jesus Is King.”) He’s most focused in “ Jesus Lord ,” enumerating all the ways he tried to heal himself — sex, religion, “too many pills, so much potions” — in the aftermath of his mom’s death.

Elsewhere, though, West sounds distracted, which leaves the show open to stealing by his many, many guests: a mournful Lil Baby on “Hurricane,” a rowdy Westside Gunn on “ Keep My Spirit Alive ,” a euphoric Roddy Ricch on “ Pure Souls .” Among the other artists featured on “Donda” are Playboi Carti, Young Thug, Kid Cudi, Lil Yachty, Travis Scott, the late Pop Smoke and West’s old frenemy Jay-Z — a multigenerational testament to the pull Kanye exerts even at his most toxic.

And yet West’s decision to release “Donda” in only an edited version, with swear words muted — couldn’t he have just told people not to curse? — feels like one more indication that music has dropped down his list of priorities. On “ Jonah ,” a shimmering digital-soul cut that might be the album’s most affecting, Vory and Lil Durk reach deep to explore the pain of losing friends and family members, only to have their verses repeatedly interrupted by distracting drop-outs.

For whose benefit did Kanye adjust the songs this way? God? His children? Listeners not already offended by the gratuitous presence of an alleged rapist?

“Donda” makes you wonder whether Kanye even knows.

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Lil Yachty Explains His Role in Kid Cudi Ending Up on Kanye's 'Donda' Track "Moon"

Lil Yachty says that he had a key part in getting Kid Cudi's guest verse on "Moon" onto the final edition of Kanye West's latest album 'Donda.'

Photo by Lorne Thomson/Redferns/Getty Images

You can thank  Lil Yachty  for A&Ring one of the standout guest appearances on Kanye West ’s new album.

During a Twitch livestream on Tuesday, Lil Boat revealed how he helped get  Kid Cudi  added to the Don Toliver-featuring  Donda  cut “Moon.”

“So I was on TikTok, right? And when the first listening party happened, they took the excerpt from ‘Moon’ and they played it,” Yachty explained. “Me and everyone in the comments was like, ‘Damn, man! Kid Cudi would sound great on this!’”

“So I hit up Vory. I said, ‘Vory, man. Cudi  gotta  get on ‘Moon,’” the Atlanta rapper continued. “He hit ’Ye and then ’Ye got Cudi, he hit Cudi. And that’s how Cudi got on ‘Moon,’ ’cause he wasn’t on there originally. Y’all can thank me!”

View this photo on Instagram

Although “Moon” was played during Kanye’s first Donda listening session  on July 23 at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, the song featured only Don Toliver. A new version with Cudi was then debuted at the Aug. 5 event , only for his vocals to be replaced by the Sunday Service Choir during the album’s third live playthrough on Aug. 26.

In the end, Yachty’s impressive A&R skills prevailed, as Cudi’s crooning was restored for the album version. Find out where Complex slotted Cudder on our ranking of the  best guest features on Donda  here .

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From DaBaby to Shenseea: The Most Notable Collaborators on Kanye’s Donda

By Grant Rindner

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Kanye West spent the last month-plus hyping up his tenth studio album, DONDA, playing it in football stadiums and tinkering with a sprawling track list that features as many A-listers as the Met Gala. This past Sunday the official release finally appeared, avoiding a rumored showdown with Drake’s new album, which will come out on September 3.

Ever since Life of Pablo , Kanye has embraced a kind of chaotic, real time approach to making music, allowing fans to hear works-in-progress and fine-tuning after the release. And he’s worked with artists and producers from well outside the Kanye West Cinematic Universe for even longer: This is the guy who gave us “Heard ‘Em Say” with Adam Levine in 2005 and tapped Jon Brion to co-produce a whole album, after all.

So scanning the liner notes of a new Kanye West project is often just as interesting as listening to the music itself—who made the cut, who got dropped at the last minute, and who got added? Much has already been made of the momentous Jay-Z reunion . Kid Cudi appears on the finished version of “Moon,” for instance, but his verse on the iteration of “Remote Control” that Kanye played during the August 5th listening is gone. And one version of the song that we’ve never heard apparently included a verse from Soulja Boy—who is now very unhappy that Kanye reached out to him just to scrap his contribution .

DONDA presents 27 tracks and over 100 minutes of music to sift through. These are the most interesting and surprising contributors to its latest (and, hopefully, final) form.

Syleena Johnson. The first voice we hear on the official version of DONDA isn’t that of Kanye or the album’s namesake, his mother. Instead, it’s Chicago R&B singer Syleena Johnson, who worked regularly with West in his early years. The record begins with “Donda Chant,” where Johnson says her name in percussive, hypnotizing fashion. The 52 second song creates a bit of semantic satiation for the listener–that feeling when you’ve heard the same word so many times it feels like it’s not really a word at all anymore.

The two Illinois artists haven’t put out music together in at least a decade. Johnson is perhaps best known for her passionate performance on the hook of “All Falls Down,” where she interpolates Lauryn Hill’s “Mystery of Iniquity.” West sampled the original song on an early iteration of his hit, but Johnson’s added grit helped make “All Falls” a smash. Johnson also sang on the Cam’ron and Kanye record “Down and Out,” while West produced her 2005 track “Bull’s-Eye (Suddenly).”

Ojivolta. This relatively unknown writing and production duo worked on a whopping 19 of the album’s tracks. They’ve already built up a pretty impressive CV despite a low profile, working on marquee pop songs for Shawn Mendes, Halsey, and Jon Bellion. In an Instagram post , producers Mark Williams and Raul Cubina credit the singer KayCyy (more on him later) with “being the link that made all this possible.”

88-Keys. This producer and vocalist emerged from New York City in the late ‘90s and, like West, helped push conscious rap to a more interesting and dynamic place sonically. In his early years, he made beats for artists like Mos Def, Consequence, and Macy Gray– in an old interview , 88 recalls that West was thrilled to meet him because of his work on Mos’ Black on Both Sides —and West would go on to executive produce 88’s first (and only) solo LP, The Death of Adam.

In the 2010s, 88-Keys worked with Jay-Z and Kanye on “No Church in the Wild,” Theophilus London on the West-featuring “Can’t Stop,” and even Sia on “Reaper.” On DONDA, he has more credits than he’s ever gotten on a Kanye record. He is listed as co-producer on both parts of “Jail,” “Remote,” “Heaven and Hell,” “New Again,” and “Pure Souls.”

Boi-1da. With the exception of Noah “40” Shebib, there may not be a producer more associated with Drake than fellow Torontonian Boi-1da. That’s why it’s a bit of an eye-opener that he’s got a credit on both versions of “Ok Ok” that appear on DONDA, since the Kanye-Drake feud recently flared up again. The song features Rooga and Lil Yachty, with dancehall artist Shenseea contributing a verse to “Pt. 2.” Fans online have noted that Kanye’s singing cadence is actually reminiscent of Drake’s more melodic work, and certain lyrics like “You wanna come in and play with the GOAT” could be interpreted as subliminal snipes at his rival.

The last time Boi-1da was credited on a Kanye track was The Life of Pablo’s “Real Friends.”

With Certified Lover Boy on the horizon, it will be interesting to see whether Boi-1da has been working with the two stars concurrently.

KayCyy. Kenyan artist KayCyy is another one of the new names on the album, adding vocals to “Hurricane,” “24,” and “Keep My Spirit Alive.” Per Complex, he’s been working with West for more than 18 months, and may be releasing music through Kanye’s new label YZY SND. “Every time Kanye would introduce me to people like Trav or Justin Bieber and all these people, he’d be, like, ‘Man, here’s my first artist out of YZY SND,’” KayCyy told Complex . “It’s like the Yeezy School of Music. You’re going to learn something there, and you’re going to meet somebody important there. Everybody’s there for a reason.”

Shenseea. The Jamaican vocalist makes two impressive contributions, singing the gospel-inflected outro to “Pure Souls,” where she riffs over an organ about God’s infinitude, and contributing a verse on “Ok Ok, Pt. 2.”

The former showcases her pure, crystalline singing voice, while the latter is an athletic, melodic rap. Over the last five years, Shenseea has developed a large following in the dancehall community, but her role as a key figure on DONDA means scores more will be introduced to the talented 24-year-old. Earlier this year, rumors circulated that Shenseea was involved with Drake and even pregnant with his child, but she vehemently shut them down in July .

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Marilyn Manson & DaBaby. While Kanye has always presented himself as a wild card who’s willing to buck orthodoxies, his decision to have controversial artists Marilyn Manson and DaBaby appear together on “Jail, Pt. 2” is difficult to stomach. (Both were also present at the Chicago listening event.)

In a February Instagram post , actor Evan Rachel Wood came forward about the ways in which Manson “horrifically abused” her during their relationship, including “grooming” her as a teenager. Since then, many others have spoken up about harrowing things done to them by Manson , including allegations of rape and physical assault.

DaBaby has been widely criticized since making comments at Rolling Loud on July 25 that were both anti-LGBTQ+ and discriminatory against people suffering from HIV and AIDS. The Charlotte rapper, who previously worked with West on “Nah Nah Nah,” has oscillated between generic apologies and seemingly lashing out at “cancel culture.” He indulges in the latter during his verse. “I said one thing they ain't like, threw me out like they ain't care for me/Threw me out like I'm garbage,” he says on “Jail.” At the listening, West only played the version with DaBaby, leading many to believe Jay-Z had been removed.

The song also caused some additional 11th hour controversy when DONDA was initially released without it. “Universal put my album out without my approval and they blocked ‘Jail 2 [sic]’ from being on the album, West wrote on Instagram . Text message screenshots posted by West indicated that DaBaby’s manager hadn’t cleared the verse, and that it was holding up the release. “I’m not taking my brother off. He was the only person who said he would vote for me in public,” West wrote to his manager. “Jail 2” is the 24th track on the album.

Buju Banton & Lauryn Hill. DONDA isn’t nearly as sample-centric as West’s early albums, but the handful it features are noteworthy in their own right. The best-known is easily his flip of Lauryn Hill’s Grammy-winning “Doo Wop (That Thing),” which West uses as the backbone of the bouncy “Believe What I Say.” Kanye has been teasing the song for nearly a year, and it’s one of the clear highs on this latest iteration of the album. That track also features a spoken bridge by reggae legend Buju Banton. In September 2020, West flew to Banton’s recording studio in Jamaica, so it’s possible they worked on the song together there. West has a long history of flipping reggae music into songs like “Mercy” and JAY-Z’s “Lucifer.”

Jeff Bhasker. Another Kanye stalwart is back in the fold, as veteran producer Jeff Bhasker earned a credit on “Come to Life.” Bhasker has worked on a wide array of West projects, from Kids See Ghosts to 808s & Heartbreak to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The songs on DONDA have traces of Kanye eras past—“Come to Life,” a somber ballad featuring West’s reflections on everything from family strife to his marital struggles (it’s the song he played at Soldier Field as he lit himself on fire ), has strong 808s vibes, which Bhasker was all over.

Rooga. West’s hometown of Chicago is a key theme on DONDA, so it’s fitting he got one of the city’s hottest rising rappers on it. (Rooga also performed his song “GD Anthem” at Soldier Field during the Chicago listening.) The bruising MC contributes the closing verse to “Ok Ok,” in which he laments betrayal by those he once thought were close friends.

Rooga’s appearance has also garnered attention because of his affiliation with the GDs (Gangster Disciples), a gang originally founded in Chicago by Larry Hoover. Lil Durk, another Illinois rapper and guest on DONDA’s “Jonah,” is known for his affiliation with the BDs (Black Disciples). Tension between the two groups has been a troubling fixture of life in certain South Side Chicago neighborhoods for decades now. Perhaps it’s no coincidence both are featured on DONDA.

Larry Hoover, Jr. Over the last few years, Kanye has been an advocate for the freeing of the founder of the GDs. Hoover has been imprisoned for decades, serving out six life sentences in a Colorado prison. West met with Donald Trump to push for Hoover’s release under the First Step Act , which aims to reform nonviolent drug sentencing.

Hoover’s son has been involved in the campaign for his father’s release. He closes out both iterations of “Jesus Lord” by thanking West for his work advocating for his father, and shares how his incarceration has affected his family. “First and foremost, I wanna thank you for taking the fight for my father to the Oval Office. You might not have been the only one that could've did that. But you were the one that did do that,” he said. West also speaks about Hoover on “Pure Souls,” singing, “This Southside, and we outside/And for all the guys that went to the White House and said, ‘Free the old man.’”

Fivio Foreign. It’s hard to deny the infectious energy of Fivio Foreign, who contributes one verse on “Off the Grid,” but also riddles “Ok Ok” with his trademark ad-libs (although sadly we don’t get a “Viral!” or “Movie!” here). His rapping on “Off the Grid” is among the most clear-eyed and impressive of his career, full of his trademark bravado, but also engaging with West’s religious motifs in very candid, compelling ways. “When I was in jail, I was lowkey/Shout out to supporters that wrote me/Eat food, work out and then go to sleep/You know I'm prayin', He carryin' both feet,” the Brooklyn drill star says.

According to Fivio , West will return the favor by executive producing his next album. If they’re able to recreate the formula from DONDA , it could be a real breakthrough moment.

Baby Keem. It’s been a hell of a weekend for 20-year-old rapper and songwriter Baby Keem, who snagged Kendrick Lamar’s first major verse in years on his new single “family ties,” and capped it off by joining Kanye and Travis Scott on “Praise God.” Some fans are upset about tweaks to the beat and verses of the song, which has undergone a series of changes at each listening. Still, Keem’s verse is raucous and sprawling, featuring one of the album’s most clever bars about Christianity (“Y'all treat your Lord and Savior like renters' insurance, you know what I mean?”).

This is actually the second collaboration between Keem and Scott, whose single from April, “Durag Activity,” became the former’s highest-charting song when it peaked at no. 85 on the Billboard Hot 100. He’s currently at work on his first studio album , which seems like a star-making moment for the eccentric talent.

BoogzDaBeast. Chicago producer BoogzDaBeast might not have as many credits as Ojivolta, but he still racked up double digits, most notably on “Pure Souls,” “Believe What I Say,” and “Hurricane.” Boogz is a more recent addition to the Kanyesphere, receiving co-production credits on songs like “Mercy,” but really breaking through with his work on Jesus is King and several records from the G.O.O.D. Music Wyoming sessions ( Kids See Ghosts , Teyana Taylor’s K.T.S.E. and Nasir ). Boogz also worked on “Tell the Vision,” the Pop Smoke song featuring Pusha-T and West that appears in truncated form here.

Jay Electronica. It’s always at least a little surprising when Jay Electronica pops up on a song. Though this is their first official release, it’s not the first music Kanye and Jay Elec have made together. According to Jay, they worked on music for his album Act II: The Patents of Nobility, but it remains unreleased.

His verse “Jesus Lord” is dense and heady, featuring another ace entry to the Jay Electronica name pun canon (“Jay Elec-entendre-nica”), and some heated lyrics about America’s foreign policy failings. “But I flew my Ducati through North America like Wakanda/Earthquakes will strike this nation for what Bush did to Rwanda,” he says.

In a since-deleted tweet from March 2021 , Electronica shared a message of encouragement with West. “[Kanye] from afar, seems like Almighty God is putting His final touches on His Mighty Sword (you). I would imagine the pain is intense. After this though, you unstoppable. Flame on King! and as for the rest of em, my mom would just say ‘Well son, fuck ‘em.’”

The Lox. It’s been smooth sailing for The Lox following their upset decimation of Dipset in the August 3 Madison Square Garden Verzuz event. Anchored by Jadakiss and a supremely polished performance that highlighted their chemistry, the Yonkers trio are re-entrenched in the zeitgeist and wound up being a late addition to DONDA.

Styles had worked with Kanye on the YANDHI sessions, specifically on a track titled “Cash to Burn” that featured the pair alongside jazz musician Kenny G. Jadakiss has a long history working with West, from his second album in 2004 all the way to Chief Keef’s “Don’t Like” remix. Jadakiss, Sheek Louch, and Styles P rap together on “Jesus Lord, Pt. 2,” the album’s 11-plus minute closing cut. Each MC highlights his unique qualities, but Sheek particularly impresses with brash, witty bars like, “Devil like, ‘Jesus Christ, he gotta be stopped’ / I don't say ‘What's up?’ you basically blocked.”

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Kanye West Plays New Album Donda  on Latest Apple Music Livestream Event

By Noah Yoo

Kanye West launched another livestream on Apple Music in the lead-up to his Donda livestream event tonight at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. He started playing the album around 10:27 p.m. Eastern as he stood in the middle of a minimal set featuring a bed. The event, which has now ended, streamed on Apple Music . (Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)

The album played tonight featured many previously shared songs with some updates and a different track order than last time . Young Thug and Kid Cudi made appearances on a previously shared song that fans call “Remote.” Donda also included a few new songs, including one with Lil Yachty and Lil Durk. Track 20 is a new one featuring the Weeknd. Track 15, a new one, featured Jay Electronica and the Lox.

Unlike the previous Atlanta event , this one was significantly more theatrical. Kanye West was eventually circled in the central stadium stage area by a crowd of bodies. The event ended with his song “ No Child Left Behind ,” during which West was flown hundreds of feet in the air.

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

The stream began with a continuous shot of West’s living quarters within the arena, where West and others were seen “finishing” the album. A clock hung on the far wall and counted down to 12:30 a.m. on Friday, August 6. The stream later showed the stadium floor. Shortly ahead of the event, a Donda pre-order page went live on the iTunes Store with a black box instead of artwork; it lists 24 untitled songs.

Donda was originally set to be released on July 23, following the first livestream event on July 22. The album did not materialize, and West later shared via a representative that the album release date had been moved to August 6. It was also reported that West had taken up temporary residency at the Atlanta venue, where he was finishing the album.

Read “ What Does Kanye Actually Gain (or Lose) From Sharing His Record Contracts? ” on the Pitch.

Kanye West : Donda Listening Event, photo by BFA/Yeezy

This article was first published on Thursday, August 5 at 10:55 a.m. Eastern. It was last updated on Friday, August 6 at 9:03 a.m. Eastern.

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The Kanye West ‘Donda’ Exit Survey

After three listening parties and an extended stay at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the latest album from hip-hop’s most polarizing figure has arrived

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After hosting three public listening parties over the past six weeks, stalking Mercedes-Benz Stadium like a high-fashion Phantom of the Opera , reigniting his beef with Drake, and bringing DaBaby and Marilyn Manson out on stage, Kanye West has finally released his 10th studio album, Donda . It’s a long project—27 tracks and an hour and 48 minutes—and there’s a lot to dissect. Here, our staff shares our instant reactions to the album, including what works, what doesn’t, and whether the spectacle of this summer was worth it .

1. What is your tweet-length review of Donda ?

Justin Charity : There’s a rotting overabundance of tweet-like commentary about this album. I’ll spare you.

Charles Holmes : “ Devil Kanye my opp. —Travis Scott” —Charles Holmes

Aric Jenkins : No one man should have all that power (to release a two-hour-long album).

Matt James : I am completely exhausted by both Kanye and the Donda rollout. Is it even possible to assess the music separate from all the noise surrounding it? This is what I’ve got: Hopping between various Kanye sounds of the past decade, Ye fails to evolve or self-edit, but the songs are mostly good.

Justin Sayles : It’s long, overproduced, and way too Jesus-y, but it’s his best since at least The Life of Pablo , which says more about the state of Kanye than the quality of Donda .

Dan Comer : Donda is Kanye’s most listenable album since My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy , and it’s not particularly close.

Andrew Gruttadaro : Everything Kanye West has done over the past few years has felt like a series of fealty tests—just a man antagonizing people to see whether they’ll stick around. Dropping a mediocre two-hour album on a Sunday definitely fits that trend.

Katie Baker : “... and that’s why I’m starting this SubStack.”

2. What’s your favorite song off Donda ?

Baker: “Off the Grid.” Though I’ll always love hearing from Lauryn Hill in any way, shape, or form and so “Believe What I Say” is up there too.

Sayles: Kanye doing drill music could’ve come off as unbelievably corny, but “Off the Grid” has the best beat and the best rapping on Donda . When Justin LaBoy tweeted that Kanye sounded hungry again, this must’ve been what he was talking about.

Gruttadaro: Give me “Believe What I Say,” so I can pretend it’s 2008 for four minutes and two seconds.

Jenkins: Early days, but so far the only song to pass the “on repeat” test is “Keep My Spirit Alive.”

James: I was really impressed with “Jonah.” Vory and Lil Durk both have vulnerable, moving verses about living life after losing someone. Kanye’s verse is short, disciplined, and rhythmically interesting. Vory’s chorus is one of the most memorable moments on the album. The samples in the background of the song play in reverse as they all reflect on the past. The Auto-Tuned chorus vocals distort like memories and old cassette tapes.

Comer: “Lord I Need You.” The drop at “your gun off safety” is my favorite part of the album, and the cheesy Taco Bell–KFC line notwithstanding, this track is Ye at his sentimental best. It feels like a long-lost cousin of “ Family Business ,” albeit with more Kardashian influence and less oversized-polo energy.

Holmes: I’m still emotionally recuperating from Kanye taking Kid Cudi off “Remote Control” and replacing him with the ​​globglogabgalab meme. So I guess I’ll go with the low-quality rip of “Remote Control” v.2 that’s safe and sound in my heart.

3. Least favorite?

Comer: “Donda Chant.” (DondaDondaDonda.)

Baker: Donda. Donda. Donda. DONda. DONda. Donda. donda. DONDA. DONDA !!!!!!

James: “Ok Ok” is pretty boring. The beat is inert, Kanye’s verse is a dud, and Lil Yachty’s meandering verse does nothing for me. The “pt 2” version of this song was a bit better, since Shenseea can make magic over any backdrop.

Holmes: The Pop Smoke song is a fallout bunker. It’s a piece of Teflon in a world full of kitchen utensils made of mochi. It’s the MCU looking at a sea of independent films hoping to play in movie theaters that are no longer there. In other words, “Tell the Vision” is indestructible and I’m still not over it.

Sayles: If Kanye was insistent on putting the Pop Smoke song on there, he could’ve at least gotten the a capella from the original song instead of going the DIY route.

Jenkins: I mean no disrespect to the late Pop Smoke—it’s really the production that lets him down here—but I never wanna hear this song again. Even with a maximalist approach on a 27-song album, I’m not sure how this made the cut.

Gruttadaro: I am not the audience for “Jesus Lord.” I don’t know who the audience is for an aimless eight-minute religious hip-hop jam, but I do know that I am not it.

4. Was Donda worth all the antics of the rollout?

Holmes: Is a root canal worth it? Sometimes to get what you need, you have to wade through the pain you never wanted.

Jenkins: Of course it wasn’t. Look, Kanye’s music defined my adolescence and I’ve defended him for longer than most, but nothing can justify such levels of self-indulgence. On top of that, did Kanye even use the stadium events in a productive manner? It’d be one thing if he sound-tested a larger catalog in order to cut down to something sharp and cohesive. Instead we’re left with a sprawling mishmash.

James: It was all way too much. By the third listening event, not even the people standing on that replica porch were excited to listen to “God Breathed” for a third time. If Donda were alive she’d probably tell Marilyn Manson to get the fuck off her porch.

Sayles: It’s all fun and games when he’s doing biceps curls in a bulletproof vest and dressing like Hellraiser , but then he’s gotta bring out DaBaby and Marilyn Manson. All I can say for certain is I’m exhausted.

Comer: The “antics” conversation is a bit overstated. Kanye’s been an obsessive album-tinkerer since his College Dropout days, but the CD deadline culture of the mid-aughts didn’t allow fans an inside look at (or involvement in) his process. Sure, the listening parties were ostentatious and the streaming delays frustrating, but he ultimately delivered an unforgettable, interactive experience. My only major gripe is his sharing the album rollout’s biggest stage with DaBaby and Marilyn Manson, but I suppose it isn’t a Kanye event without a moment that disappoints damn near everyone watching.

Charity: I like Donda a bit better than The Life of Pablo , but I think the stunt marketing for The Life of Pablo at least suited the music on The Life of Pablo , for better or for worse. This time around, did we really need a Joker-fied stadium encampment, kink gear , and a random release date generator to promote a rather low-key album full of Z-sides?

Gruttadaro: The man put MARILYN MANSON on a pedestal. Culture has seemingly dropped the anti-Kanye bent (because culture in 2021 can’t stick to any one thing for longer than 30 seconds) and decided to forgive him despite any signs of genuine remorse, but Kanye is irredeemable. Or at the very least not worth the effort.

Baker: Look, I don’t want anyone to be saddled with unnecessary stress during these difficult times, but on the other hand, the torture Kanye put The Ringer ’s dear sweet music editor Justin Sayles through was, to me, a delight.

5. Who had the best feature on Donda ? Who had the worst?

James: Most of the best parts of Donda are features: Fivio Foreign eats everyone’s lunch on “Off the Grid;” Vory and Shenseea make every track they appear on better; Roddy Ricch lives up to his hype on “Pure Souls;” KayCyy and Westside Gunn are a smart pairing on “Keep My Spirit Alive;” Jay Electronica and the Lox make that 11 minutes and 30 seconds of “Jesus Lord pt 2” feel like a breezy five. Only Yachty’s verse on “Ok Ok” comes across as a complete miss.

Jenkins: The task of identifying which feature I dislike the most is a difficult one. As for which I enjoyed the most? Westside Gunn on “Keep My Spirit Alive” is clean (“Thank Godddddd”).

Baker: Loved both Playboi Carti and Fivio Foreign’s appearances on “Off the Grid,” one of my favorite songs of the album; also a big fan of Jay Electronica’s verse on “Jesus Lord,” which name-checks the Clintons, Ertugrul, the pyramids, and boxing. But I could probably have done without DaBaby trying to guilt-trip his detractors, “as a father of daughters”-style.

Comer: Anytime Kid Cudi delivers a classic Cudi Croon , he’s going to get my nod for best feature. The worst verse came from Jay-Z, and I think Kanye knew it. You can’t convince me “Jail pt 2” with DaBaby wasn’t actually meant to replace Hov’s version.

Sayles: Fivio Foreign’s “Off the Grid” verse should make him a star. Meanwhile, Yachty’s verse on “Ok Ok” should be enough to blow the goodwill he built up with Michigan Boat Boy . It also makes you wonder how bad that Soulja Boy verse was .

Holmes: Vory going from relative unknown to floating on three tracks has to count for best feature. The Weeknd isn’t technically the worst feature, but his placement on “Hurricane” feels like Billboard Hot 100 bait, which is … fine.

6. How would you rate Kanye’s rapping on Donda ?

Holmes: Sometimes it’s more important when a troubled student bothers to hand in something instead of forgoing the assignment at all, which sums up the rapping on most late-career Kanye projects (e.g. Ye , Jesus Is King , Kids See Ghosts ). Kanye bothering to lyrically show up on Donda makes it the best thing he’s done in ages by far, even if the political contents of the raps are as despicable as ever.

Gruttadaro: Well, it does seem like he can still do it when he tries ([ whispers ] or has help?), which is pretty surprising having listened to Ye .

Baker: Some of it reminded me of the good old days, and then sometimes I was totally taken out of the whole listening experience thanks to some cringe shoehorned-in reference to Giannis or Bezos. (Which, actually, I guess that kind of reminded me a little of the good old days too?)

Comer: It’s refreshing. I’m never expecting Kanye to deliver top-tier bars, but his pacing and tone throughout this album was strong, with standout performances on “Off the Grid” and “Heaven and Hell.” He sounded more like a rapper’s rapper than he has in quite some time, after his past two solo album releases made me question if that Kanye was still in there.

James: This question is all about expectations. For reference, I physically wince whenever I listen to a new Kanye verse, so it was about what I expected. He had a few moments when he actually held his own and a few moments when he fell on his face.

Charity: I don’t really care to litigate Kanye’s rapping in the physical sense. He’s jittery and breathless, he can’t sing for shit, and that’s his style at this point, you enjoy it or you don’t. But the songwriting is just so all over the place. Kanye used to have a knack for saying just the right thing at just the right measure on just the right song. His little Kanye-isms about being an asshole, being a genius, being a celebrity, and being a connoisseur—they were all rooted in a tight coordination of musical and comedic timing. But now Kanye will make some cutting comment about his divorce and you’ll forget which song you even heard the line on, because all the songs have some other version of the insight, and now all the insights have blended together, unedited and redundant. On these past few albums, Kanye West is just vomiting the TMZ homepage at you.

Sayles: For all the credit he’ll get for his entirely competent “Off the Grid” verse, let’s not let him get away with rapping “Free throat coat for the throat GOATs.” Sad.

7. If you’ve been following the evolution of this album at the listening events, is this the best possible version of the album? Which changes do you like? Which do you disagree with?

James: I watched all three streaming events and the only thing I really remember is that he played a lot more of the globglogabgalab sample at the last event. So, it was a great decision to cut that down to a minimum at the end of “Remote Control”—we didn’t need another “ poopity scoop ” situation on our hands. I also definitely don’t need two versions of four of the songs on the album. The tracks labeled “pt 2” are not actually continuations of earlier tracks. They’re just alternate versions that add almost 23 minutes to the running time of the album. Kanye must be remembering the blowback he got during the rollout for The Life of Pablo . He needs to pick the best version and deal with the haters—or maybe stop playing everyone in the world different versions of unfinished music.

Sayles: He made a lot of cosmetic changes from Version 2, the one he premiered in early August. Some were fairly innocuous, like the sample he added to “Heaven and Hell” or the extended outro on “Pure Souls.” Others practically ruined the song: You can’t convince me removing Cudi from “Remote Control” was the right call. We’d be having a different discussion if he would’ve stopped three weeks ago.

Holmes: Donda Version 2 is the one that got away. She’s the high school sweetheart you should’ve cherished more. She’s the partner you took for granted that’s found a far happier home than you could ever provide. Now all you’re stuck with is a DaBaby feature and a Cudi-less “Remote Control.”

Comer: I didn’t like that Kanye included multiple versions of four different songs, a decision seemingly influenced by negative fan reaction to some of the newer cuts at the final listening party. Letting fans impact the album’s tracklist is a dubious approach with a slippery slope, and I wish he would’ve trimmed the extra fat so the final product was more succinct. But, Mr. West, if you’re reading this and are still in a conciliatory mood, how about releasing Chance the Rapper’s version of “Waves”?

8. If you’re coming into this album cold, does the end result sound like it was worth all the public A/B testing?

Gruttadaro: As an editor, I disagree with the construction of this album—the length, the lack of restraint, the constant tinkering post-deadline—on a near-fundamental level.

Baker: Here’s some exclusive footage of Kanye doing A/B testing for this extremely “I ain’t reading all that, I’m happy for u tho, or sorry that happened” album:

Holmes: In a world where Kanye wasting my time wasn’t part of the job description, I think I’d be far kinder to Donda . To those that didn’t spend three Thursday nights watching a man jerry-rig an album out of scotch tape and paper clips, I’m sure Kanye’s 10th studio album sounds like a classic.

9. How does Donda compare to the rest of Ye’s post- Pablo output?

Baker: I listened to the whole thing!

Holmes: Considering the album is longer than seven songs, has comprehensible Kanye raps, and multiple features from rappers below the age of 30, it’s easily the best of latter-Kanye records.

Comer: I said it in my tweet-length review and I stand by it: This is Kanye’s most complete, most listenable, most likable, and most quotable album in more than a decade.

Charity: The best bits of Donda pick up musical (and spiritual) threads from Yeezus and fit them nicely with the spiritual (and musical) threads on Jesus Is King . Yeezus is still a much better album in its own right, but as for the post- Pablo work, Donda mutes the best and worst impulses of those later albums. The meanest thing I could say about Donda , I think, is that it’s easy listening. But that’s also kinda what I like about it compared to the hours upon hours of Halloween music that Kanye had been subjecting us to.

James: It’s his best, most polished release since Pablo . Unfortunately, Kanye has gotten worse at self-editing since 2016 and Donda is somehow even more bloated than Pablo . There are so many different kinds of Kanye songs on Donda that it can’t possibly feel like a cohesive album.

Gruttadaro: There are songs on here that I want to like, and if this album had come out in 2016 rather than 2021, I bet I would’ve listened to it religiously. It’s far better than Ye and Jesus Is King . But it also comes with so much more baggage.

Jenkins: Overall, this album fits into the general pattern of releases established post- Pablo : moments of magic bogged down by mediocre production, lazy lyrics, and PR fiascos. But we should acknowledge as consumers that Kanye is a real person who’s undergone a tumultuous past few years. It’s a positive that he’s still active and creative despite it all, and perhaps he’ll come out of this experience as a more realized artist.

Sayles: The greatest sin of Jesus Is King and Ye was that they were boring. At least no one can accuse Donda of being that.

10. Why do you think we continue to pay Kanye West the attention that we do, and what would it take to change that?

Gruttadaro: Deep down I think Kanye West is trying to answer these questions too.

James: Kanye casts many lines. If you’re a fan of the music, he’s got an album for you. If you’re just following the Kanye story line, he’s got tabloid drama, fire, aerial stunts, masks, and a practiced lack of punctuality. If you’re a hypebeast, he’s got $200 shirts . If you hate Kanye, he’ll happily feed that hatred by sharing the spotlight with Marilyn Manson and DaBaby. He needs as much attention as possible, and his ability to get that attention has eclipsed his musical prowess.

Baker: Shamelessness is a superpower in our society, and that will never change.

Charity: Ten thousand years from now, when the aliens review the wreckage of the United States, they aren’t going to identify democracy as our profound contribution to humanity’s long adventure on this planet. They’re just going to find a lot of mass media. It’s our only idea about anything: entertainment, yes, but also politics, psychology, religion. Mass media is what we do. Celebrity is what we do. Celebrity is what Kanye West does. He beat the game on easy mode, really.

Comer: Kanye is the living embodiment of the phrase “people aren’t just one thing.” He’s the devil on the shoulder who encourages saying whatever you want “ just to see how it feels ” in one moment, but the Super Christian making gospel music and refusing to curse in the name of Jesus in the next. He’s the man who proclaimed live on national TV that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people,” only to become a Donald Trump supporter and his eventual political opponent. Kanye married and is now perhaps getting divorced from the most famous person on the planet. He’s so Chicago and so Atlanta and so Hollywood at the same time. He sucks, but he’s also awesome. Kanye is simply too interesting to ignore, and that’s how it’ll always be.

Sayles: At this point, he’s a fraction as popular as Drake, but he commands far more attention, and should for a long time. But it’s better that way: If Drake had tried the listening party gambit, it would’ve been well-produced and entirely anodyne. And where’s the fun in that?

Holmes: The Kanye spectacle will pump dopamine to the little nooks in our reptilian brains forever. This is the prison we’ve built for ourselves. Watching a billionaire spend vast amounts of money building absurd monuments to a musical legacy that’s already solidified rarely gets boring. It doesn’t hurt that 50 percent of the time the music succeeds despite the bullshit.

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An Exhaustive, Exhausting Attempt at Understanding Kanye West’s Donda

In the end, it was Drake who forced Donda ’s arrival. After a Beats ad announcing the project, three listening events, and a last-minute appearance by accused rapist Marilyn Manson, Kanye West only finally released Donda when Drake lit a little fire under his ass, teasing a date for his own upcoming album, Certified Lover Boy . Or is it so simple? Things rarely are with Ye (as Mr. West is now apparently calling himself, based on a legal filing to change his name and officially make his 2018 album self-titled), who’s now claiming his label released Donda , his long-promised tenth studio album, before he gave final approval. And that’s to say nothing of the album’s ever-changing state, bloated track list, and dozens of collaborators ( some happier with the “final” result than others ) . So let’s get up to speed on all things Donda with a guide to the album. It’ll take a bit — but still only a fraction of that 108-minute run time.

How the hell did we get here?

The beginnings of Donda coincide with the beginnings of West’s doomed 2020 presidential run , as much as we may want to forget about that. Days after announcing his run in July 2020, West teased a song called “Donda” on Twitter, named for his late mother and posted on her birthday, July 12. Then, on July 18, West tweeted and quickly deleted an announcement for an album called Donda , to be released July 24, 2020. He’d previously been teasing a Jesus Is King follow-up called God’s Country , and just released the single “Wash Us in the Blood” in late June; Donda was thought to be the new iteration of that album. ( Don’t even get us started on Yandhi .) The 20-song track list he tweeted on July 18 included many titles that ended up on the final released album, including “Donda,” “Keep My Spirit Alive,” “Lord I Need You,” “Off the Grid,” “Tell the Vision,” and “Praise God.” West tweeted a new track list on July 20, featuring a slimmer 12 songs, including new addition “I Know God Breathed on This,” which seemingly appears on the final album as “God Breathed.”

But the album never materialized on July 24 (possibly owing to Taylor Swift’s surprise folklore drop that same day , along with the general territory that comes with releasing an album on Kanye Time ). In the months after, West didn’t say much about his next album, instead focusing on his campaign and releasing a Christmas EP with his Sunday Service Choir, Emmanuel . Enter: 2021. “Tell the Vision,” a Pop Smoke–featuring song initially teased on West’s first Donda track list, eventually came out on Pop Smoke’s second posthumous album, Faith , on July 16, complete with a verse from West’s GOOD Music president-partner Pusha-T.

Days after, the first reports emerged of an A-list, invite-only Donda listening party that allegedly took place that weekend. West followed up the news by announcing his first public Donda listening event, at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium on July 22 — with the assumption being that the album would come out at midnight on July 23, a full 364 days after it was initially intended to. West even confirmed the release date in a Beats ad that debuted during the NBA finals, starring sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson and featuring the previously teased song “No Child Left Behind.”

West indeed debuted a version of the album on July 22 , hours later than scheduled, but Donda wasn’t formally released afterward. A new listening event followed two weeks later at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on August 5; West moved into the stadium in the interim , reportedly touching up the album and livestreaming his new life from a locker room in the stadium. West again debuted an updated album , and said updated album again didn’t hit sales platforms and streaming.

The routine repeated three weeks later, with West announcing a listening event at Soldier Field , in his hometown of Chicago, for August 26. And for a third time, the album didn’t appear that following Friday, when albums are traditionally released. Except then it did, the morning of Sunday, August 29, in a fitting touch from pastor Ye.

Upon the album’s release, GOOD Music president Pusha-T praised West in an Instagram post explaining the album. “This is about power, money, influence and taste…nothing more, nothing less,” he wrote. “Watching you ‘joystick the culture’ makes us all proud. Continue to do things your way, congrats, and I’m honored to have been a part of the process.” And it definitely was about money, with Billboard estimating ahead of the Chicago event that each of West’s Atlanta events grossed between $1.5 and $2.7 million. That’s to say nothing of the Apple Music livestreams for West’s listening events, with the second and third each breaking Apple records at 5.4 and 5.9 million viewers, respectively.

Okay, but what about Drake?

Right. Amid the circus of the Donda rollout, Drake appeared on Trippie Redd’s song “Betrayal,” dropping a subtle diss at West to reheat some old beef. “All these fools I’m beefin’ that I barely know,” he rapped. “Forty-five, forty-four (Burned out), let it go / Ye ain’t changin’ shit for me, it’s set in stone.” (West is 44.) West responded by posting a screenshot of a group text that looked to include Drake, where he appeared to add Drake’s mortal enemy Pusha-T and sent a picture of the Joker. “You will never recover,” West wrote. “I promise you.” Drake responded on August 27 by teasing the release of his own long-delayed album, Certified Lover Boy , for September 3 — which at that point was the new intended release date for Donda , according to its Apple Music preorder (which had been updating the release date as each delay came and went). Later that day, Hits Daily Double reported that West delivered masters for Donda to his label (for a second time, after once taking them back), and that the album would be out that weekend. TMZ also reported that some Drake fans took matters into their own hands and left a few signs at West’s actual childhood home in Chicago, including one reading “45 44 BURNT OUT.”

So, Kanye wanted to release it, right?

It sure seemed that way … until hours later on August 29, when West posted a message to his Instagram. “UNIVERSAL PUT OUT MY ALBUM WITHOUT MY APPROVAL AND THEY BLOCKED JAIL 2 FROM BEING ON THE ALBUM,” he wrote, referring to the second version of the song “Jail,” which he debuted featuring DaBaby and Marilyn Manson at the Chicago Donda event. When the album first hit streaming, “Jail pt 2” was not available to play; text message screenshots West posted (and later deleted) hinted that DaBaby’s management had not approved the feature for release. “I’m not taking my brother off,” West wrote. “He was the only person who said he would vote for me in public.” In another text, he added, “So the album is not coming out.” DaBaby’s manager, Arnold Taylor, denied West’s claim on Instagram , calling it “social media bullshit.” He added that West had not been in touch about the song and he “cleared it in 2 seconds” once he finally heard from the rapper. “Jail pt 2” became available to stream hours after the rest of the album.

Wait, the second version of the song?

That’s right! As he’s done since 2016’s The Life of Pablo , which he tinkered with even after releasing it, West has been steadily updating Donda , going back to the drawing board (and that whiteboard) after each listening event. One example: West’s Kids See Ghosts partner Kid Cudi tweeted after the first Atlanta listening event that he wasn’t on the album, then appeared on the album by the second Atlanta event. ( Lil Durk similarly joked he “missed the jet” to work with West in an Instagram comment ahead of the first Donda event, but later tweeted , “I lied I made ye jet lol” when his verse on “Jonah” played.) He featured on newly debuted song “Remote Control,” also with Young Thug, and a new version of “Moon,” along with Don Toliver. However, once West brought Donda to Chicago, both Cudi’s parts had been removed (although the other guests stayed). As for the officially released version of Donda ? No Cudi verse on “Remote Control,” but still Cudi vocals on “Moon.”

Even past that DaBaby verse, the song “Jail” has been through its own journey. West’s first listening event, in Atlanta, ended with the song’s debut, along with the surprising revelation of a Jay-Z feature — the first collaboration between the Watch the Throne rappers in five years, which Jay reportedly recorded earlier that day. The song stayed intact at the second Atlanta event, but by the Chicago Donda event, West seemed to have replaced Jay-Z with two choice guests. He stood on the porch of a reconstruction of his childhood home, the centerpiece of the event, with Marilyn Manson and DaBaby, as he played a new version featuring both musicians — a pointed choice, given recent allegations of rape and abuse against Manson by over a dozen women, and DaBaby’s recent fall from grace after making anti-AIDS and -LGBTQ comments at Rolling Loud Miami in July. A West source confirmed to People after the event that the choice in guests was deliberate: “He knows that people are going to be upset and that there will be backlash,” the source said. On the released version of Donda , “Jail” featuring Jay-Z is track two, while “Jail pt 2,” featuring Manson and DaBaby, is track 24.

West also adapted the album to things that happened between listening events. He added rap group the LOX to “Jesus Lord” after their impressive showing at a Verzuz battle against Dipset , which took place days after the first listening event; it marked West’s first collaboration with Jadakiss in nearly a decade. (West also added a speech from Larry Hoover Jr. to the song, after previously attempting to secure a presidential pardon from Donald Trump for Hoover Jr.’s father, the founder of Chicago’s Gangster Disciples.) That ended up being the 11-minute “Jesus Lord pt 2” on the official release, while the nine-minute original featuring Jay Electronica also stayed intact. West also added the Weeknd to “Hurricane” — a song that has, in years of past iterations, featured everyone from Ty Dolla $ign to 6ix9ine — after the singer told GQ , in a story published after the first listening event, that he wanted to work with West again. And on another song he added at the second event, “Lord I Need You,” West seemed to reference his ex Kim Kardashian’s attendance at the first Donda listening. “Time and space is a luxury,” he raps. “But you came here to show that you still in love with me.”

So who else is featured on this album?

In addition to Jay-Z, Kid Cudi, Young Thug, and the Weeknd, the album features even more of West’s previous collaborators, like Francis and the Lights on “Jail,” Ty Dolla $ign on “Junya pt 2,” and the Sunday Service Choir on a number of songs. Many of the collaborators are featured across multiple cuts — singer Vory features on “God Breathed,” “Jonah,” and “No Child Left Behind,” for instance, while Playboi Carti is on “Off the Grid,” “Junya,” and “Junya pt 2.” Also on “Off the Grid” is rapper Fivio Foreign, who appears on “Ok Ok” as well, which also features rappers Lil Yachty and Rooga.

And the list goes on! Travis Scott returns on “Praise God,” alongside Baby Keem, after previously guesting on June 2020’s “Wash Us in the Blood,” thought to be a Donda single at the time. Among the rappers joining Keem in working with West for the first time? Lil Baby features on “Hurricane,” after West tweeted that he was his “favorite rapper but won’t do a song wit me.” Also featured on that song is KayCyy, a rapper who’s been circling West for over a year prior. KayCyy also contributes the chorus to “Keep My Spirit Alive,” a song that marks West’s first linkup with the Griselda crew, as members Conway the Machine and Westside Gunn both feature (along with a small contribution from Royce da 5’9”, also new to West’s fold). After Roddy Ricch criticized West for peeing on his Grammys in 2020 , the rapper features on “Pure Souls” (alongside dancehall singer Shenseea, also on “Ok Ok pt 2” ). “They said I was mad at the Grammys / But I’m lookin’ at my Grammy right now,” Ricch raps. “Pulled up on Ye, and I said, ‘They don’t understand me’ / I just want my dawg to pipe down.” Meanwhile after Lil Durk paid homage to West with his “Kanye Krazy” music video , the Chicago rappers got to formally collaborate on “Jonah.” On top of it all, the album features one impressive sample too, of Ms. Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” on “Believe What I Say.”

What’s all this about Ariana Grande vocals?

You’d think an easier question would be who isn’t featured on Donda , but not quite. When the album officially arrived, many fans thought they heard Ariana Grande’s voice on title track “Donda.” But hours after the release, Grande praised featured vocalist Stalone on her Instagram Story , while Stalone tweeted , “I love Ari and so grateful that my vocals would even be compared to hers.” Then there’s also Soulja Boy, who had previously contributed a verse to “Remote Control” that didn’t make the final Donda cut. He tweeted text exchanges with West about a feature on August 29, adding, “Tell homie dont hit my phone no more.” Chris Brown, West’s “Waves” collaborator who is featured on the chorus of “New Again” but reportedly had a verse removed from the song, also had some choice words upon the album’s release. He first called West “A WHOLE HOW” on his Instagram Story, before deleting that comment and replacing it with “NAH HE TWEAKIN.” And before you think West is doing a service by removing two other accused abusers from his album, now would be a good time to mention that Manson is credited on the original version of “Jail” as well as “pt 2.”

Well, is it a gospel album like Jesus Is King ?

West hasn’t described Donda as such, but he hasn’t ditched the religious comments and imagery of his recent work. If it’s not obvious from all the song titles mentioned, many of the songs invoke God, Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity. In the texts West posted to Instagram about clearing DaBaby’s “Jail pt 2” verse, he wrote, “The people next to you trying to destroy you[,] But God gotta bigger plan,” presumably referring to Donda . West’s second listening event in Atlanta even saw him ascend into the sky at the end of the performance, in an allusion to heaven. And in a puritanical twist, Donda is only available for sale and on streaming in its clean version.

Purity itself seemed to be one of the motifs of West’s listening events, with the Chicago event featuring West setting himself on fire before restaging his wedding to Kim Kardashian, with his ex-wife playing herself. The events also featured multiple homages to his childhood — past the reconstruction of the house in Chicago, he wore all red during his first Atlanta event in homage to Akira , a 1988 anime film he has been a fan of for years and called “the greatest animation achievement in history.” West’s childhood, of course, ties in with the album’s namesake, his late mother, who appears across the album via archival recordings. “Donda” features a speech she gave in 2007, referencing West as “the man I describe in the introduction as being so decidedly different.” The first show debuted a cover for the album that was a painting by the French artist Louise Bourgeois, who explored motherhood in her work after her own mother’s death inspired her to become an artist. The cover was later reportedly changed to a photograph of Donda West, although the released version of the album has an all-black cover — in what could be seen as evidence that West really wasn’t ready to release the album yet after all.

Okay, so how did André 3000 get involved?

Not by his own choosing, that’s for sure. Continuing to push their beef, Drake played an unreleased Ye track, “Life of the Party” (at one point intended to be part of Donda ), during a September 3 broadcast on SiriusXM station Sound 42. The track featured Outkast member André 3000 and found West taking aim at Drake, rapping about the group message he claimed to have added Drake to. “I put Virgil and Drake on the same text, and it wasn’t about the matching Arc’teryx or Kid Cudi dress,” West rapped. “Just told these grown men stop it with the funny shit.”

It’s unclear how Drake got an updated studio version of the scrapped Donda track, but André isn’t happy to be dragged into the beef. The rapper released a statement to Rolling Stone on September 4, expressing his disappointment with being caught between the artists. “A few weeks ago Kanye reached out about me being a part of the  Donda  album,” André said. “I was inspired by his idea to make a musical tribute to his mom. It felt appropriate to me to support the  Donda  concept by referencing my own mother, who passed away in 2013. We both share that loss.” The musician added that he took his verse off the album after learning West didn’t want explicit lyrics on Donda , and deciding that “would not work” if he couldn’t release the explicit verse as well. “The track I received and wrote to didn’t have the diss verse on it and we were hoping to make a more focused offering for the  Donda  album but I guess things happen like they are supposed to,” he added. “It’s unfortunate that it was released in this way and two artists that I love are going back and forth.” The rapper continued that he also wanted to work with Drake on Certified Lover Boy (along with a wish list of top rappers, including Kendrick Lamar, Lil Baby, Tyler, the Creator, and Jay-Z). “I just want to work with people who inspire me,” he said. West has yet to comment on Drake playing “Life of the Party” or André’s statement.

This post has been updated throughout.

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Kanye west debuts supervillain look, hangs with lil yachty in atl, kanye west spiked out to hang with lil yachty ... before 2nd 'donda' party.

• Breaking News

Lil Yachty 's posted up with Kanye West inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and from the look of things, Yachty's vibing on "Donda" ... while Ye's morphing into a supervillain.

The "Hit Bout It" rapper paid Kanye a visit at his makeshift ATL home ahead of the second "Donda" listening party set to go down Thursday evening -- and Kanye was wearing his usual full head cover, plus a jacket covered in giant spikes!

Seriously, looks like something from the "Suicide Squad" wardrobe.

Yachty's the latest rapper to visit him inside his quarters at the home of the Atlanta Falcons. Chance The Rapper and Vic Mensa have also popped in to see Kanye.

Apple's launched a stream for viewers to "Watch Kanye finishing Donda in Atlanta," but it's intentionally muted the entire time ... which is why you can't hear any sound coming from the video Yachty posted.

Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media.

As we reported ... Kanye and co. had been trying to figure out how to make this experience different from the first, which as we first reported, broke the Apple Music Global Livestream record with 3.3 million viewers .

Kanye, of course, has been living in the stadium as he finishes up the album . At this point, he knows the place inside and out ... so that very well could come into play as he tries to come up with something new for the second event.

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Westside Gunn and Conway the Machine Featured on Kanye’s Donda Album

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The Buffalo Kids are on the new Kanye West album 'Donda.' Conway the Machine and Westside Gunn are featured on a track called 'Keep My Spirit Alive.' The track features vocals from KayCyy, who is a Kanye protege from Kenya. The track is mellow, insightful and crafted with care. You can check it out below.

"Keep My Spirit Alive" featuring Conway the Machine, KayCyy & Westside Gunn

I had to hop a flight to Atlanta to check out the album release party. Let me say this, Kanye is a marketing genius. The stadium was packed and most of us purchased tickets, just to preview his new album. He was on stage the whole time, but didn't really "perform." Now, he did "levitate," which is kind of cool, but it definitely wasn't a concert. There were hundreds of people dressed in all black, who were walking around a circular gate around the stage for the entire show. I felt like it was an ode to Kanye's mom, Donda, the album's namesake. It felt like they were lost souls, mourning the greatest loss in their lives.

Another stand-out track to me and pretty much everyone in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta (judging from the crowd reaction) was "Jail" featuring Francis and the Lights and Jay-Z. Obviously, the reunion of "The Throne" was a pretty big deal. The album had a very spiritual vibe to it.

The rest of the tracklisting for 'Donda' via Newsweek :

"Donda" (Ft. Pusha T & The World Famous Tony Williams) "Moon"(Ft. Don Toliver & Kid Cudi) "Praise God" (Ft. Baby Keem & Travis Scott) "I'm Not OK" (Ft. Lil Yachty & Rooga) "Junya" (Ft. Playboi Carti) "Jonah" (Ft. Lil Durk & Vory) "Heaven And Hell" "Off The Grid" (Ft. Fivio Foreign & Playboi Carti) "Remote" (Ft. Kid Cudi & Young Thug) "Donda" (Interlude) "New Again" "Pure Souls" (Ft. Roddy Ricch) "Keep My Spirit Alive" (Ft. Conway the Machine, KayCyy & Westside Gunn) "Never Abandon Your Family" "Jesus Lord" (Ft. Jadakiss, Jay Electronica, Rooga & Styles P) "I Know God Breathed On This" (Ft. Vory) "Tell The Vision" (Ft. Pop Smoke) "Jail" (Ft. Francis and the Lights & JAY-Z) "Lord I Need You Lyrics"

The album still hasn't been released, as of the publication of this story on Friday, August 6, 2021. According to Newsweek ,

Fans of Kanye West have taken to Twitter en masse to express their frustration at his much-delayed album, Donda, still not being released.

It previously had a release date of July 24, 2020, and most recently August 5, 2021. But you know Ye does what Ye wants!

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Takeoff will be posthumously featured on Ty Dolla $ign and Kanye West ‘s upcoming album, Vultures 2 , Rolling Stone can confirm.

Along with including a verse from the late Migos rapper, the track, tentatively titled “Let Me Chill Out,” will feature Rich the Kid and NBA Youngboy and is set to be one of the “highlight tracks” of the ¥$ record, according to the source.

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West collaborated with Takeoff and the rest of Migos on “We Did It Kid” from his 2022 album, Donda 2 , which never made it to streaming services. The track also featured Baby Keem. Following Takeoff’s death, West posted two photos of himself with the group, writing, “ Love forever ” and “Family,” on X.

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