Donda; Did it Live up to the Hype?

As of today, August 29th, 2021, Donda is out on all streaming platforms. Everyone is happy because after the countless delays the album is finally out, but did it live up to the hype?

No, it didn’t. Comparing to Kanye’s other albums, Donda is mid at best and you can tell this album was quantity over quality. Speaking of quality, the quality was terrible compared to Kanye’s standards. Songs like Junya sound like they were recorded on 3 dollar microphones from Walmart. There were some great features on the album like Jay Z, Roddy Ricch, Playboi Carti, Travis Scott, Baby Keem, etc but individually Kanye was disappointing. For a casual listener, this album is listenable but if you are listening to the album as a whole it is a tough listen.

As for Kanye’s antics before releasing the album, it shows that Chance The Rapper was right. Hours before releasing the album, Kanye posted a picture of texts between him and his manager Abou ‘Bu’ Thiam that apparently Dababy and his manager were not responding to calls or texts about releasing their version of “Jail”, “Jail pt 2”. This ended up being made up by both Bu and Kanye, which leads to the question what they were trying to do.

Hopefully, Kanye can connect with people that want to help him, rather than yes men.