Review: Kanye's "Donda" Is Equal Parts Pleasant and Underwhelming

West, at one of several listening parties prior to the release of Donda

It has become one of America's great traditions for Kanye West to precede an album release with months upon months of hype and attention. In 2018, on the cusp of both his solo album ye and his Kid Cudi collaboration album Kids See Ghosts, he grabbed headlines with a series of tweets and public comments seemingly endorsing then-President Donald Trump, accusing Barack Obama of "never doing anything for black people," and then telling TMZ that "slavery was a choice." It was an...unorthodox method of self-promotion, to say the least, but regardless of how you felt about his comments-- and you did feel a way about his comments --you were bound to be intrigued by what his music would say. Previously, in 2016, it was a series of listening parties in extravagant venues for the upcoming, fluid The Life Of Pablo, which was coupled with Kim Kardashian's jaw-dropping Snapchat reveal of West and Taylor Swift's phone conversations about lead single "Famous." Kardashian also played a role in the buildup for West's last full release, the 2019 Gospel album Jesus Is King, by officially announcing the project with a picture of the tracklist on her personal Twitter account, which preceded live performances in Kanye's 'Sunday Services,' as well as the screening of an accompanying film with the same title as the album.

This time, West mostly, mercifully, stayed away from headline-grabbing comments, but again went the route of large-scale 'listening parties,' renting out multiple NFL stadiums for thousands of fans to hear it streamed, most notably Soldier Field in his hometown Chicago, where he had a set built in the middle of the field resembling his childhood home. He also built up anticipation with a livestream of his preparation of the album, but this quickly became the stuff of memes, as it mostly included him sleeping in a small room or doing workouts in the basement of the Atlanta Falcons' stadium in a bulletproof vest. I'm not including a hyperlink because I want you all to look this up for yourselves and see that that insane sentence I wrote is in fact entirely true. But, really for no reason other than because the rapper can't seem to help himself from being a provocateur, he again courted controversy by inviting Marilyn Manson and DaBaby to be a part of the last listening party. Both musical artists feature on the album's tracklist, but their very presence understandably had many up in arms, as DaBaby was just weeks removed from making outrageous homophobic comments during a concert set in Miami, and Manson has been the recipient of very serious accusations of rape and sexual assault.

All of this begs the question: why? Why build up your album to this extent, instead of just dropping a line on Facebook or sending a cryptic tweet a week in advance, or something? I can't tell if this seemingly self-destructive marketing Kanye West does is, well, self-destructive or brilliant, and I think that encapsulates the frustrating artist perfectly. You can't argue that employing Donald Trump's method (or was it Trump emulating Kanye?) of "negative press is still press" works to an extent; you would have to be pretty off the grid to not know he had new music coming, and even if you've cancelled or sworn off Kanye, you know there's a part of you that's morbidly curious to hear it. And yet, deep down, I know he still thinks himself as an artist more than anything else, and from an artist's perspective, inviting the maelstrom of attention and hype to your newest release raises expectations to a level that anything short of brilliant is sure to disappoint.

And that's where we arrive at Donda, released 20 days ago. Named after his late mother, there's no question it's a very personal project; multiple tracks discuss his relationship with his mother and the effect she had on his life. Furthermore, his Christian faith and themes of repentance play a large role; there's a lot of lyrical continuity from Jesus Is King. But what Kanye has in heart, he lacks in heft on this album. There are a couple instances-- "Believe What I Say" and "Off The Grid" come to mind -- where his bars feel like the hungry, hard-hitting stuff we heard really for most of his career, but by and large, there's a whole lot of reliance on the backing music and features from guests to provide the bulk of the quality. While we're on the topic of features, perhaps Donda's biggest problem is that rather than effectively tie into the theme of repentance and redemption (which is, if we're giving maximum grace to Kanye, what we could argue his point was by including them?), the appearances of such problematic individuals as Manson, DaBaby and Chris Brown do little more than to distract from that very trope. Furthermore, the nearly 2-hour runtime is almost inherently bloated; in an album that already had very little standout songs, including a second version of four different tracks was wildly unnecessary, especially when the differences between pts. 1 and 2 are very minimal. There was a whole lot of buzz surrounding Donda, only for it to include almost two hours' worth of songs I, for the most part, have no interest in listening to.

That failure to match the hype especially frustrates me because, quite honestly, despite some of my harsh comments indicating the contrary, this is still a good album! Sonically, it combines the music of Yeezus and Jesus Is King, a fascinating and mostly effective fusion of church organ and prog-rock. For as much filler content as there is, too, there are also very BAD parts. I wouldn't go so far as to say "no skips," but there aren't many. For as much tinkering and overproduction that Kanye is prone to, this was a surprisingly cohesive and consistent album; it's not a stretch to say it's his most cohesive release since 2013's Yeezus, though it certainly fails to match the highlights of Life Of Pablo and Kids See Ghosts. "Jesus Lord," with big thanks to Jay Electronica's star turn, is a 9-minute vibe, and "Believe What I Say," "Hurricane," "Moon," "Off The Grid," and "Jail," among some others, all have real replay value.

So, is Donda worth a listen, all 108 minutes of it? It definitely is. And who knows, in a year with only a few standouts to date, it may even end up among the better releases of 2021. That in itself feels like a pleasant surprise given Kanye's very public mania and ensuing disappointing releases in the last several years. But is this going to be in the pantheon of his bests? Was it worth the tour of huge-scale listening tours, the bizarre livestreams, the firestorm of controversy? Not in the least.

I just wish for his sake that Kanye would realize that.