Donda - Kanye West: Review
Kanye West
is an artist who really needs no introduction. One of the biggest and most controversial figures in popular music who has maintained a devoted fanbase and commercial success for nearly two decades. After a trio of stadium shows where unfinished versions of his 10th studio album were played to fans, Donda finally dropped at the ever so unconventional time of 8 am on a Sunday morning.
Review By Lav:
Well here it is, the record everyone has been talking about. For the better part of a month the general music community has been caught up in the tailspin of Donda that Kanye's biggest fans have been toiling in for months if not even years going back to Yandhi. So what are my credentials. While I'm not a Kanye stan who defends his actions regardless of quality or context, I am a big fan of his music with records like College Dropout, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and The Life Of Pablo being among the best high profile hip hop records of their era. I heard the record played live in Atlanta before it's initial release and watched the livestreamed version from Chicago. I've been a music critic for 4 years and a music enjoyer for most of my life. And finally, least importantly, everyone I know has asked me what I think about the record across the last few days. So lets do this.
If you want to know about Donda in as few words as I can put it then here it is. Within the tracklist of the record is a wonderful, versatile and extremely expressive album but getting to those moments requires sitting through an absolute slog of songs that go on way too long, sport redundant ill-fitting features and have a compete lack of a meaningful themes throughout.
With the maybe or maybe not bonus tracks this record tallies just 10 minutes shy of two hours in length and across that time there are plenty of incredibly highlights. Jail is the first full track on the record and it absolutely rocks. From the chugging riffs at the core of the instrumental to the completely blown out vocals it's a brash and anthemic start to the album. The only complaint I really have about the song is that the second verse and accompanying bridge use a short and very redundant flow that gets old quickly. Thankfully Jay-Z comes in on the back end and delivers exactly the killer verse that it required to wrap everything up perfectly. The next big highlight comes on Hurricane, an absolutely fucking heavenly song that's been floating around the Kanye circle for quite a while now. The Weeknd was a perfect addition as his vocals soar over the drums and sound blissful alongside the backing choir. Even Lil Baby's obnoxious non-rapping can't ruin the track since he sticks to a pretty short series of mostly inoffensive bars. When Abel returns with his gorgeous vocalizing it sets the stage for Kanye who delivers some classic sounding bars over the heavenly organ. Excellence.
Jonah is basically a Vory song with a Kanye feature on it, but it's good so I'll include it here. Junya is a short rumbling banger that I've had stuck in my head since the listening party. It's a short and sweet cut with a solid Playboi Carti feature that is one of the most hyped up moments on the record. This is also the start of a run of great songs leading up to the records midpoint. Believe What I Say sports an absolutely killer beat courtesy of a Doo Wop (That Thing) sample proving Lauryn Hill's continued influence over good hip hop. Kanye deserves a fantastic, lyrically focused performance making for an overwhelmingly feel good song I can't get enough of. 24 is another song that really stuck with me after the listening parties as it sees Kanye and the Sunday Service Choir deliver on the holy promise of religious implication that Jesus Is King attempted but failed to deliver on. The last song in this run is Remote Control a shorter cut that I probably shouldn't love as much as I do. Kanye and Young Thug deliver performances with all the quirky vocalizing and lyricism you'd expect from a collaboration between the two and it makes for an eclectic highlight.
Heaven And Hell is really just one long verse with an intro and outro that don't necessarily have anything to do with each other. That one verse however is a serious highlight that gets off to a slow start and builds up in time with an instrumental rise that gives the song a grand finale. Given that the record has an issue with its length, and Jesus Lord is its longest song you'd think that it was perfectly symptomatic of the problem. It isn't. This song is fucking incredible. Kanye not only delivers a great hook but also an absolutely standout multi-phased verse that evokes Ultralight Beams in the absolute best ways. Following that verse is big shoes to fill but Jay Electronica fills them with one of the best featured verses on the entire record. His lyrical jumping jacks are relentlessly impressive and his vocals continue to impress me nearly every time I hear him on a record. The song wraps up perfectly with Larry Hoover Jr.'s monologue about his incarcerated father wrapping up its themes of forgiveness making for a song that is just utterly magical.
Lord I Need You is a love song seemingly to both god and Kim K full of classic Kanye lyrics like "the best collab since Taco Bell and KFC". Seriously though it's a sweet song that reminds me of Violent Crimes but with a more romantic angle and a bit less vulnerability on Kanye's part. The record ends on a pretty solid note to with Come To Life which features one of the records standout instrumentals. Kanye certainly does some singing on the track that flirts with being annoying but for the most part it feels sincere. The songs dramatically optimistic second half really adds a lot of weight to the meaning of its hook and despite its linear composition I think it achieves some very harrowing moments. This lines up well with the final original song on the record No Child Left Behind a similarly dramatic finale that features a brief but memorable feature from Vory and at least makes some kind of attempt to draw the record to a thematic close at least in terms of its religious subject matter.
So yeah, that's 10 tracks. Honestly a record made out of those songs and maybe one or two of the interludes would be really, really good. But even looking at the rest of the songs here there are tracks that are at least partially worth saving. New Again has been memed a lot recently for its funny bars about the proper way to text Kanye but honestly I think it's for the better. It's a pretty average song outside of those bars and while pleasant I would never go out of my way to listen to it on its own. Pure Souls is a decent track that sees Kanye coming together with Roddy Rich and somehow stretching that out to 6 minutes in length. While this is one of the better Roddy Rich performances I've heard recently that doesn't forgive the fact that you can basically cut out the entire second half of the track and loose almost nothing since it didn't really have any thematic focus to begin with.
The long, arduous and completely meaningless Shenseea passage on the back half of Pure Souls is actually a good example of what makes the record such a taxing listen for a few reasons. Firstly let's tackle the features. One of the most talked about elements of the record in the lead up to it's release have been what guests would end up being on it and Kanye really brought the house. Unfortunately this means that there are artists here who have absolutely no business on the specific tracks where they turn up, and even worse there are artists who could have fit in on their songs but deliver laughably under-baked performances.
Praise God is a Travis Scott and Kanye collab which is normally hard to go wrong with and it all gets off to a pretty good start. The production is awesome and while it doesn't really have any memorable refrains it has a vibe I can certainly get with. That is until Baby Keem shows up and drops a nearly unlistenable feature. It's very obvious that the track is meant to be a hard-hitting banger but Keem chooses to dial back his flows as much as possible and suck all of the momentum out of the song. On top of that he also just starts screeching with auto tune on the back end, clearly trying to be Playboi Carti but without any of the intent or charm behind it. It really does make the second half of the track pretty much unbearable. Ok Ok sees Kanye getting out in front of Certified Lover Boy by releasing a Drake song of his own. Jokes aside it's a melodic trap cut that you could slip into More Life and nobody would bat an eye. Lil Yachty is actually pretty decent on the song and delivers on his promise of consistently silly and charming lyrics. Rooga is by far the weakest link with stuffy singing and a heavy amount of censorship that completely ruins what little flow his verse had.
Moon is a bit more complicated. It's a track that Kanye fans have always really liked and I don't think too many people will be surprised that I don't find it as enjoyable. What I will say is that Don Toliver absolutely kills the tracks hook and it may be the best thing I've ever heard Don do in his entire career. Unsurprisingly though Kid Cudi's ability to somehow always both over-sing and under-sing is on full display on this track. He sounds like a freight train crashing into this very beautiful song while also simultaneously making no memorable impact to it whatsoever. Kanye has barely any prescence on the song which feels like a waste because the song truly does have a spectacular hook, but pretty much no other reason to listen.
The other big problem I have with the features is one that frequently ties into the records issue with making it's songs twice as long as they need to be. There are a number of really good performances on Donda that have absolutely no business in the tracks their placed on. Keep My Spirit Alive has an instrumental that sounds suspiciously like Ghost Town and a featured singer who seems to be trying really hard to sound like 070 Shake which is a suspicious start. Even more suspicious is why anyone thought it was a good idea pairing this dreamy sonic palette with Westside Gunn and Conway The Machine. Make no mistake I love the Griselda guys and I even like their verses here Wess in particular, but what are they doing on THIS song. Hearing them with this instrumental sounds like adding DMX to Sunday Candy. An example just as bad also comes on the song that has the most insufferable runtime, God Breathed. It's a shame because it has one of the more memorable hooks with Yeezus-esque glitchy production and rumbling bass. Why the hell is Vory on this song. It almost sounds like Kanye knew how out of place he would sound and changes the entire sound palette of the track whenever he comes on. Rather than sounding experimental it just makes it sound unnecessary and tedious. Finally there's Off The Grid a song I can almost get behind as Kanye and Playboi Carti trade off pretty relentless verses to go with the explosive beat. After every single listening party people were talking about how much they loved the Fivio Foreign verse that takes up a ton of time on the back end of the song and I still have no idea why. While the verse isn't terrible and it's far from the worst here it is by far the least exciting part of the song and there is nothing in the lyrics or performance you can't hear on just about any other trap record this year. The song is tolerable but a perfect representation of how this records length crushes it.
It stands to be seen whether or not the four remixes that close the album off will be considered as merely bonus tracks, or key components of the record that are essential to a full album listen. While the streaming numbers seem to suggest a lot of people are skipping them entirely I do want to briefly touch on them. Ok Ok pt 2 and Junya pt 2 are two of the biggest wastes of time on the entire album and that is really saying something, I would never listen to these versions over the originals for any reason. Jesus Lord pt 2 rounds out at a staggering eleven and a half minutes. While I think there are actually some pretty good features added to the track I'm not sure why they needed to be tacked on to the already enormous runtime. I would much prefer if the new verses replaced Larry and Jay rather than adding onto them because if you are really supposed to spend another 11 minutes with this song to close out the album it is reaching levels of tedium I can't even quantify.
The only remix song I find myself actually really enjoying is Jail pt 2. Without taking into account the controversy behind it's features I actually think it does a half decent job of adding something new to the song and giving it a reason to be separate from the original. Marilyn Manson adds a lot more than I expected to the chorus and I wish he was interpolated even more, while DaBaby's verse replaces Jay-Z's on the back end of the song and he really does nail it. With both lyrics and flows that would normally seem out of DaBaby's wheelhouse he really lives up to the moment.
Make no mistake, Donda has some absolutely incredible moments in its runtime. Kanye has one of the best discographies in all of hip hop and there are numerous tracks here that can go toe to toe with some of his best work, that's no pushover. On the other side of things however this is a classic example of leaving absolutely nothing on the cutting room floor. At minimum I think 30 minutes of the record is made up of partially or completely wasted time and that isn't even taking into account the bonus tracks which waste much much more time. It's easy for me to pick out moments of brilliance in these songs but the inconsistencies get out of control quickly. I will be a fan of Kanye's music for a very long time going forward but even in my wildest imagination I can't possibly imagine EVER returning to this record for its full 85 minutes, or god fucking forbid, 110 minutes ever again. 6.5/10
