Music Reviews

After what I consider to be one of the most confusing album roll-outs in recent memory (4 different concerts that took place before the release of this album, each varying in quality, also the fact he literally kept his producers locked somewhere in the basement night and day just producing this thing) and with a name like this (named of course after mr. West’s late mother), DONDA was setting up to be one of the most intresting albums in Kanye West’s carier, which is not an easy thing to do mind you, the dude literally changed the entire course of modern pop music with one of his albums, which alone makes him one of if not the most influential artists of our generation. On Ye’s last album „Jesus Is King“ he tried to embrace this more spiritual no-swearing christian character, which resulted in mixed results, the album was mostly a fluke, but if done right, this new path for Ye had shown at the very least some maturity and also some serious potential for future projects along the way. So of course, the expectation of this album here were sky high and so was my initial reaction to this album – that’s why I took my time with this review, just to kind of let the hype around this thing die down so my real opinions on this album come through and I’m honestly really glad I did so, because this album is in two words just a „beautiful mess“. It has easily some of the best song this man has EVER recorded point blank period, but at the same time, some of the biggest L’s this man has ever taken. Now nothing on this record really comes nearly as close to the level of badness like the song Drunk and Hot Girls does (only exception being Tell The Vision, which I’ll come back to later…), but still, there are some duds that are holding this record back from being the true masterpiece it was meant to be.

Let’s start with some of those misses, beacuse I kind of wanna get the bad stuff about this record out of the way, so we can focus more on the positive side of things, which is fortunately a much greater chunk of this record. Now right of the back, easily the worst track hands down no competition on this whole 27 TRACK LONG ALBUM has got to be „Tell The Vision“, which is barely a song – to this day I can’t tell you what in God’s name (pun very much intended) this track is suppossed to be, it’s this weird horrendously mixed interlude with Pop Smoke as the feature, where he literally just repears himself over and over saying „We made it“ – the song not only doesn’t sound finnished, it doesn’t sound like they even really started working on it, this is the demo of all demo’s, the song could have easily been cut from the record and actually nothing would change – honestly the only reason I unfortunately think this song is on here is just to expose Pop Smoke even more after his unfortunate passsing, which is kind of disgusting if you ask me. Alright, now that’s out of the way, the rest of the tracklist varies from good, not so good to spectacular or just really forgetable. Also technically this album has 27 songs on it, but the last 4 tracks are just second parts of already existing usually much better songs on the album, so I won’t be talking about those, with the exception of „Junya pt. 2“ which IS the superior version and I’m still left here wondering, why this isn’t the one we got on the „official“ album. Coincidently the only other song besides Tell The Vision I can really say is „bad“ is definetly the song Junya – the bass on this song is atrocious, even for someone like me, who has terrible ear for music theory stuff, it’s just mixed waay too low and it’s just really distracting and un-fitting. Playboi Carti nor Kanye can’t save the song and honestly they don’t even really try to, definetly a low point on this album. Now to some of the good stuff, I think the mixing overall throughout this record turned out to be not so shabby actually – some of the song might need a remastering somewhere into the future, but I was left mostly statisfied regarding this aspect of the record. Now to take it more track-by-track, the record opens up with the interlude song „Donda Chant“ which was a really confusing start initially, but once I learned the background to this song and what it meant (Ye’s mum’s last hearbeats before hear death), I got a new found appreciation for what the song was trying to do. It also lead smoothly into the next, first real song of the album, „Jail“. This song is a 5 minute monumental opener with no drums, only electric guitar and it somehow just works wonders – something Kanye has been known to do for a long time now, is taking something that in theory just shouldn’t work and makes that thing work and this song reflects that beautifully. The next song in line „God Breathed On This“ is much more abrasive, much more dark, but keeping it still kind of low-key, it’s an okay song, but the 2 minute dragged out musical outro was really unnecessary and honestly it kind of overstayed it’s welcome. Now the first real banger this record has to offer is „Off The Grid“ featuring Playboi Carti and Fivio Foreign and sweet Jesus was I not expecting this to go as hard as it did when I first heard it – this song absolutely slaps and completely justifies it’s almost 6 minute run time. The highlight of this song is definetly the drill-style beat switch, that occures around the one minute mark, which I seriously didn’t even notice until like a minute later or so. Now after this point, the record kind of starts to loose it’s focus and starts being all over the place – „Hurricane“ featuring The Weeknd is a highligh for many, but for me personally, the song doesn’t click as much as it did with so many people – still a good song, I just don’t think it’s as crazy as everyone is making up to be, like it’s the physical proof of God’s existence. Some highlights for me also include „Believe What I Say“ which is so groovy it hurts my brain (seriously, try not to move to this beat, you either can’t or you’re a liar), „Moon“ with Kid Cudi, which never not makes me cry, „Heaven and Hell“, where Kanye really let’s himself go off, though the song structurally isn’t the greatest thing ever and „Jesus Lord“ which in it’s 9 minute long runtime really goes for that Runaway nostalgia factor and I’d be lying if it didn’t succeed. Now here I wanna take a quick moment to talk about what I consider to be not only the best song on the album, but also one of Kanye’s best songs in general, and that is the song „Come To Life“ – now when I first heard this I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, this song is actual magic in audio form, it’s enough to make a full grown man break down and cry. Kanye pours his heart out on this track and it just cuts so deep, the piano switch in the second part, the beautiful melodies, Kanye’s angelic singing, everything in this song just comes together to create something magical, one triumphant expirience, I’m telling you people this is what plays when you enter heaven after you die. It’s just really touching, I have nothing more to add, it’s stunning. Some other stand out tracks include „Remote Control“ just for that ridiculous Globglobgabgalab sample (can’t believe this sentense I just wrote is real) and „Pure Souls“ featuring Roddy Rich and Roddy absolutely carries this song. The closer „No Child Left Behind“ has one of the most gorgeous and infectious melodies of this whole abum, it’s beautiful lush production compliments the simple yet effective lyricism and comes togehter to form one really strong and moving closer that wraps up the whole record pretty nicely.

So ther you have it, the long-anticipated DONDA. The question that everyone’s been asking recently, was it worth the wait? And to that I say yes, for the most part it lived up to the set expectation (not that it realistically completely could). I guess if there is one thing this record proves, it’s that Kanye has still very much got it, even in his new christian-friendly form and he can still make good life-changing songs with it.

Strong 7/10