Album Review : Kanye West - Donda (2021)
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Kanye West has been stuck between a rock and a hard place for the last couple years. 50% of his predicament is his own fault. Claiming on TMZ that slavery was a choice and featuring an alleged abuser on his record will not get him any favors in this day and age. But 50% of this situation is based on people believing that being bipolar, unmedicated and filthy rich make you somehow more responsible for you actions than being simply bipolar and unmedicated.
There was simply no way his new album Donda could’ve been received as well as his previous efforts. But I’m here to tell you it’s a really good record.
It’ll be difficult not to paint Donda in broad strokes because it is so freakishly long (108 minutes) and the lead-up to it has been so problematic that nobody wants to engage with a 3000 words piece, but I’ll do my best to be clinical. There are tree questions people usually want answers to when reading about a new Kanye West record: How are the beats? What is he talking about? and What are the essential materials I need to listen to?
So I’ll try to provide you the most straightforward answers possible to these questions.
Are the beats good?
The beats are probably the best, most original and pervasive part of Donda. A lot of them share a commonality: church organ. It is the least surprising thing from a Born Again Christian rapper to incorporate church music to his work, but they serve a purpose beyond an obvious expression of faith. Donda is a brooding, stormy, pre-apocalytpic record and Kanye uses church organ in an expansive fashion, to solemnly fill the airwaves.
Sometimes Kanye replaces the organ with Gregorian chants like on the manic, driven God Breathed or sometimes he uses the Sunday Service Choir like on Hurricane, but the songs on Donda never really run out of these expansive sounds meant to break the listener’s solitude and give him a sense of wonder in an otherwise troubled atmosphere. It might seem like a detail, but it pervades the album and gives it a sonic coherence few records can boast to have.
That said, Donda gets on the jammy side in the second half. Being a proto-industrial minimalist record at its heart, Donda has a thing for long, erratic outros. A song like New Again (outside of featuring KNOWN abuser Chris Brown) is bathing in lengthy, almost trance-like worship that kind of loses its purpose if you aren’t actively participating in it. I understand Brown is begging God to change him, but I really don’t fucking care that it’s doing it publicly.
Kanye is never afraid of switching it up, though. On Jail and the sweet, luscious Moon he features two very different brands of buzzing guitars. On Tell the Vision he uses a straight up piano to craft a banger. His creativity is still unbound by genre, convention or your shitty opinion about what his music should be and that’s makes him great at what he does. Donda is jagged, glitchy and somehow contemplative in its own way. There’s nothing else like it.
What the hell is he talking about?
Themes are always a challenge when discussing a Kanye West record. He loves to consciously and unconsciously scramble signifiers and leave you to figure out your own meaning. Donda’s been called a tribute to his mom because of its title, but I don’t think it is quite accurate. Literal allusions to Kanye’s late mother kind of come and go on the record. I believe it is really more about his relationship to God and his “divine mission” than anything else.
Because Kanye believes whatever happens to him is part of a plan specially devised by God. He says it on God Breathed: I don’t care ‘bout the laywer fees/I don’t care ‘bout your loyalties/God will solve it all for me. But what is that plan exactly? It might vary from record to record (and perhaps according to Kanye’s moods), but I think on Donda he’s angling to herald religious redemption. That would be why he’s invited every disgraced artists and moms on it.
I believe this is why Chris Brown howls at God to “make him new again” and why Marilyn Manson was invited to harmonize on Jail Pt.2 that “we’re all liars”. It shows in other songs like Heaven & Hell where he explains that Earthly desires are what creates suffering (hence why his album has no cover) and invites to burn false idols. He constantly invites sinners to repent, which I believe is why he invited so many on his record. It is a form of redemption to him.
Why is the album named Donda then? After all, didn’t he already dedicated 808s and Heartbreaks to her? Well, there is not a set limit on how many albums you can dedicate to a single person to my knowledge, but I believe Kanye’s mother is more of a guiding light to him now. She is his link to the transcendence he is desperately seeking. Because transcendence is really the last frontier left for him. He’s already succeeded in every possible way, except this one.
What songs do I absolutely need to listen to?
Oh hell. A lot of them are fucking great. The first Jail (featuring Jay-Z) is an absolute post-ironic scorcher where Ye and Hova claim that the biggest crimes of celebrities are vanity and dishonesty. Off the Grid is my absolute favorite and perhaps the only old school banger along with Tell the Vision. It’s perhaps conceptually the lightest song on the record, but it’s a great, infectious singalong about finding refuge from your Earthly problems.
Moon is another one of my favorite. It’s very sweet and laid back and Don Tolliver’s voice has this dreamlike quality to it, which makes you feel like it’s three AM and you’re looking at a full moon. Hurricane is also great. Heaven and Hell, Junya, Believe What I Say all have something to contribute to Donda. Somewhere in that jagged, erratic behemonth lies the skeleton of an album that compares to Kanye West’s immortals. He was almost there.
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Donda does not get even close to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy or Yeezus, but these are a borderline impossible standard to live up to. If it has been a little tighter, it would’ve been up there with The Life of Pablo. Given the controversy about the album being released against Kanye’s consent, it might organically improve over the next couple months. I don’t think Kanye should care, though. This version of the album is the version people will remember.
I really liked Donda nonetheless. It’s long, exhausting, sometimes magnificent and sometimes ambient noise. It is massive, jagged and imperfect like an old cathedral that is falling apart. Sure, you might have your qualms with Kanye’s ethics and behavior, but he can still craft music that transcends differences. I wouldn’t want to be Kanye West and he’s created the ultimate soundtrack for people who live lives nobody else should want.
Kanye’s kind of back. It’s exciting!
