His problems, especially at the time of irreversible climate change, global pandemic and unprecedented transfer of wealth from poor to rich are simply not interesting, at least not to me. It could be seen as an interesting look at the psyche of an oligarch until you remember that said oligarch is Kanye West. Lyrically, like on Jesus Is King, Kanye uses the record to spew his prosperity gospel, superficially reconcile his life as an artist with his wealth and towards the end of the album touch on the breakup of his relationship with Kim Kardashian. We’ve heard Kanye do this before and we’ve heard him do it better. The intro Donda Chant is impressive as an album opener, a female acapella repeating the album title in an unpredictable pattern, but then its big synths, organ and autotune for the next two hours. The production on here is as neat and tidy as it is predictable. Any bombast on here is delivered without rough edges. Is there anything as hectic as Bound 2 or Power on here? No, but this is middle aged, gospel Kanye we’re dealing with now. Mike Dean’s keyboards feature heavily on this record which is always a good thing too. Believe What I Say samples Lauryn Hill’s Doo Wop (That Thing) to make the most gorgeous, dreamy pop cut on the album. The huge drums which come in at the end of Jail remind me of something from Kate Bush’s The Dreaming. Everything sounds expensive and clean and wonderful and there’s some beats on here which stand up to some of the most memorable in the Kanye canon. That’s not to say the production isn’t good. An almost two hour gospel dirge, dosed to the eyeballs on lithium. Team Kanye (his suite of about four and a half million producers, session musicians and engineers) employ the same dramatic organs throughout this entire album which while giving this thing a cohesion not seen since 2011’s Watch The Throne also makes this record Kanye’s most monotone offering to date. It’s also, by my calculations, about 40x more epic. Kanye has done epic before but his most epic record, 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was a whole 40 mins shorter than Donda. The rollout for this album is proof that it’s a skill he still possesses.ĭonda is loooonnnnng. Kanye’s ability to not only soundtrack the times but also literally BE the times is probably his primary skill. In 2005 he was the “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” guy, in 2009 he pissed off Obama after humiliating both himself and Taylor Swift at the VMA’s, he married and procreated with a Kardashian and backed the Trump presidency. Kanye wasn’t just making records, he was making news. He innovated like no other and became to millennials what The Beatles were to the boomers. Every new record delivered a fresh approach. His run from his 2004 debut The College Dropout right up until 2018’s Ye and Kids See Ghosts was basically flawless. Jesus Is King was the first time Kanye had ever put out a dud record. The newly minted billionaire used his last record to spout the prosperity gospel yet somehow, simultaneously, managed to make a record which lacked any kind of spirit. A phoned in offering which lacked the ideas and emotional dynamism of his earlier work. His previous outing, 2019’s Jesus Is King, was dreadful. Donda, the tenth studio album by 44 year old evangelical Christian Kanye West, arrived on Sunday after numerous extravagant listening parties and the expected, requisite internet hype.