Kanye West's "Donda": A Heartfelt Tribute To His Late Mother Years In The Making

As with any Kanye West release, expectations were insanely high for this album. This is largely due to the fact that Kanye has one of the most well-rounded album catalogs which have all received praise from both critics and fans alike.

In classic Kanye West fashion, the rollout for Donda was messier than ever. Leading up to the album release, Kanye held several listening parties by renting out NFL stadiums and having people purchase tickets to hear his new project.

While listening parties are not a new trend in the music industry, this one was odd. Typically, MC's will host listening parties in multiple cities and play the same music, unaltered. However, with each listening party for Donda, every song always had slight tweaks to it. Essentially, consumers never knew what they were getting into when stepping into each listening party.

This is very on-brand for Mr. West, who has a long history of making last-minute adjustments to albums which ultimately end up delaying these albums for months or years on end. This infuriates many fans, yet Kanye still seems to outsell the large majority of other artists.

After months of delays, Donda was officially released on August 29th of this year. West decided to stick with his recent trend into gospel music but this time the gospel was met with intense infusions of hip-hop. West heard the criticism from his last album Jesus Is King and built off of that in an effortless way.

Every single track of the 27 listed is grandiose in nature, which makes listeners feel like they are stepping foot into Sunday service mixed with nightclub music. Quite an odd mixture, but Kanye is the only artist that has proven to successfully pull this off.

The greatest advice to ever take into consideration when listening to a Kanye West album for the first time is to clear your mind of any and all expectations. Donda is no different. This album has been met with extremely mixed reviews (Again, nothing new for a Kanye release) and I believe a large portion of the "bad" reviews for this album are due to the absurd expectations placed on Kanye.

The title Donda is a reference to Kanye's later mother who goes by the same name. Kanye has hinted at making an album dedicated to his mother ever since she passed in 2008. While some of the themes may not meet many mothers' approval, Kanye does not curse one time on the album which can feel corny at times as he uses filler words but is still heartfelt, nonetheless.

I believe Kanye accomplished his goal with Donda. It was extremely genuine and felt genre-pushing for hip-hop as there is now a trend towards grandiose, gospel-like music. Regardless of opinion and controversy surrounding Kanye, this is a must-listen.