Kanye West, a well-known singer, rapper, and songwriter, has been active and performing ever since the early 2000s. Of course, because of how long his career has been, it comes as no surprise that Kanye has been successful worldwide. Recently, Kanye West’s new critically acclaimed album, Donda, came out, and the reviews are all over the place.
A few nights ago, I listened to the entire album in one sitting. But before I start talking about Donda, I want to talk about Kanye West as a person for a hot second. His public persona and his opinions have been quite questionable over the last few years. Of course, with this in mind, it raises the question of whether the artist should be seen separate from the art they create. While there’s no doubt that his music has had a lot of impact, I think it’s essential to preface this review by addressing Kanye’s public persona—this review is not meant to condone any harmful actions or behaviours of the artist.
REVIEW
Now, moving on to the Donda review! For those of you who don’t know (I didn’t either until recently), the album name, Donda, is Kanye’s 10th studio album and named after his late mother. I listened to Donda in order and in full. In the beginning, the album is a bit slow, but after the 4th song, it starts picking up in terms of beat and hype. Aside from that, I really like how there was a mix of slower, calmer songs and hype songs. It’s nice to have a variety of tempos so that the album as a whole is not overwhelming. The songs on Donda are really centred around religion, which is unsurprising due to Kanye’s Christian beliefs. Almost every song on the album mentions God, sin, and Kanye’s faith. Now, I’m personally not a very religious person, so the album’s messages didn’t impact me a lot. However, the religious messages and lyricism did make the album very interesting to listen to, from a non-religious perspective.
As for the features, I really like the number of different rappers brought onto the album such as The Weeknd, Kid Cudi, Don Toliver, Baby Keem, etc. However, I also feel that the number of features on the tracklist caused the album to be less memorable than I thought it would be. A lot of the songs are overpowered by the feature artists, to the point that if I didn’t know what album was playing, I wouldn’t have even guessed it was a Kanye song. I found this to be a really common trend throughout the album.
OVERALL RATING
6/10
This was my first full listen, and I’m gonna give it a 6/10. Again, not as memorable as other Kanye albums like Graduation, The Life of Pablo, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, etc. That may also be because I’ve been listening to those so much longer than Donda. Some of my favourite songs off the album, however, were “Moon,” “Believe What I Say,” and “Hurricane.”