rolling donda thread

my understanding is it's a little different to the most recent event, and there's more significant changes from the earlier events, but i have no interest in digging through all the different versions

i got tired of it 20 tracks in last night and went back to bed so it was a success in that regard

"come to life" is actually decent

"jail pt 2" just being an alternate version of "jail" with dababy & manson instead of jay-z and the exact same kanye verse & beat etc. is so stupid

guessing all the pt 2s are the same deal this is ridiculous

they were indeed all the same deal

overall it's a chaotic bloated mess of an album, a few decent ideas here and there but none really polished effectively. his second worst only ahead of jesus is king.

i like this to a surprising degree but fuck kanye

"jail pt 2" just being an alternate version of "jail" with dababy & manson instead of jay-z and the exact same kanye verse & beat etc. is so stupid

I figured “Jesus Lord Pt. 2” (which could be Ye’s “Junior Dad” if not for the lyrics) wouldn’t include the Larry Hoover Jr. monologue, to stand alone as either a pop or gospel single, but no.

i think jesus is king is underrated

just throwing it out there. this is my view.

I agree. It removed things I like least about his other albums (bottle-service misogyny, big samples).

if you removed all the bloat & cut this down to the best 30-40 minutes it would still only be about his third worst album instead of second worst

he's really stagnated creatively, the last few albums have all just been lesser regurgitations of the sound palette from life of pablo

first listen: not a disaster like his last two albums. kanye's raps are still the weakest.

The last Kanye I heard was Life of Pablo. You're all hypocrites and money changers in need of a good whipping.

if you removed all the bloat & cut this down to the best 30-40 minutes it would still only be about his third worst album instead of second worst

yea I mean there's a decent album in here somewhere but instead this comes off like nearly 2 hours of demos that's still a few months away from being a completed product. the auto tune sounds like shit, Kanye's raps almost never scan properly, there are audio artifacts everywhere, the samples are always awkward, and there's so much compression on everything. it sounds like the shit blasting out of the boom box at the parties I was at 12 years ago, random hip-hop downloaded off Limewire with audio tags everywhere. also I find a lot of the religious/tribute to his mother kinda gross, it reminds me of when R. Kelly dedicated a song to his Mom and then immediately followed it up with "Sex Me".

now having said all that its a bit fascinating, there's some inexplicable, Tommy Wiseau-esque shit on here. but it's more The Neighbors than The Room

this doesn't personally strike me as incredibly unfinished but maybe i have to hear it with headphones

it's better than pablo imo

I don't know anyone can even give him streams or clicks at this point, fuck this guy completely and I'm not desperate enough to hear a terrible album that I want to feed his ego in the least.

(i am personally not streaming this)

yeah i admittedly streamed the first few songs on YouTube but felt too gross (and wasn't good enough tbqh) to continue

there are plenty of people out there with no moral compunctions about giving him their fraction of cents, so i figure my cent fractions are just a drop in the bucket

Soulseek my brothers and sisters

finding a download of this album is already too much effort expended for what i heard

yeah I mean, I'm not casting stones here. it's just the massive whiplash you see online, esp on twitter, with people posting "fuck this guy" for months but suddenly live tweeting the album the second it dropped on streaming services.

the same exact people? or do you mean the general rhetoric as you've seen it

i also feel like a crazy person bc this is the best-sounding kanye record i’ve heard in like a decade

decade plus i mean

Honestly, I have enough music in my life, new and old, that I have no problem ignoring this the same way I've skipped his last few records. Even my teens are like "fuck Kanye."

the same exact people? or do you mean the general rhetoric as you've seen it

Both I guess, but yes sometimes the exact same people. I follow two different people who were absolutely trashing him during the Chicago listening party thing ("fuck this guy", "stop feeding his attention" etc etc), but both of them were live tweeting their reactions Friday morning.

Everyone on that app wants to be part of "the conversation" and "the conversation" is increasingly a toilet

I don't see the lie.

Leaving professional music writing after nearly 20 years is, in many ways, absolutely heartbreaking. But I gotta say, this tirefire dropping on a weekend and I don't have to think about it, have an opinion on it, or even listen to it ... chef's kiss

What makes me sad about this is how much oxygen it sucks away from artists who actually have something interesting to saw and work hard to make the music the best it can be.

Quality/content aside, what if West brought out, say, L’Rain instead of Marilyn effing Manson

Interesting to say

xp to whiney, i was trying to get the head of NPR music out to see a Sun-Ra tribute show that he was really quite excited about and he had to cancel at the last minute because of the britney conservator story. he was not happy.

its kind of understandable though, a decade of unparalleled greatness followed by a dramatic and very public downfall is just a naturally intriguing story. everyone loves a comeback story. its the same reason why sportswriters could not shut the fuck up about Tiger Woods even when he was badly missing the cut by like 10 strokes. I think Tiger's a scumbag but him winning the Masters two years ago was legitimately one of the coolest things to ever happen in sports. and while what he's been doing lately sucks it at least sucks in kind of an interesting way. that said nobody would give a fuck about this album if anyone else had done it which is why I'll probably never listen to it again.

looks like 'donda' is heading towards the biggest album debut of the year so far

.@kanyewest's #DONDA headed for #1 debut on the US albums chart with 300K+ first week, headed for biggest 2021 debut. More updates through the week (via @HITSDD).

— chart data (@chartdata) August 30, 2021

carti sounds so awesome on “off the grid”

a decade of unparalleled greatness

2004-2014, pretty good

most greatness went perpendicular

I don't necessarily agree with that myself, I've always felt Kanye was wildly overrated, just saying a lotta people really like everything he did up to Yeezus at least

I would take Kendrick 10-20 over kanye 04-14
i would take TI 03-13 over kanye 04-14
hell, i would take TMBG 88-98 over Kanye 04-14

Kanye means a lot to people the way the Beatles mean a lot to people. When he first emerged, he stood out for his frankness and vulnerability in a rap scene dominated by machismo. Also the first few albums were just addictively listenable and felt fresh and inventive. A lot has happened since then but it’s no surprise to me that people are still invested in his music.

i still think going from graduation to 808s is one of the most impressive swerves in any musician's discography

Honestly i think being in high school at that time is part of it. There are many millennials who grew up with Kanye. For these listeners I think the cockiness plays different. Like at least on the first four albums, the “narcissism” was a guy who was clearly insecure, and open about his insecurities, choosing to believe in himself anyway, which is powerful. M

This quality turned rancid after his mom died though. For whatever reason, it seemed like he needed to believe he was a mozart level genius or else he was worthless. He raps about being the best of all time and also about thinking of suicide, very often in the same song. He has an unstable sense of self. Sometimes he turns this into thrilling art but honestly it is not that unique. It is a very recognizable form of mental illness.

What I would like for kanye is not for him to make any more great records, but for him to feel at peace with himself so he no longer needs these narcissistic fantasies. It’s the same thing I would want for anyone similarly struggling.

Like the erratic contrarianism, the grandiosity, the sick attention-grabbing stunts like inviting marilyn manson onstage, it definitely is all coming from a pretty fucked up place. That’s why it’s hard for me to just write him off as an asshole. I feel like that’s why he still has fans. Although some people might just like the spectacle.

i like this record and that feels really pointless bc the conversation around kanye is so poisonous and it's totally something he invited on himself

"pure souls" is so awesome though

his production has gotten so boring

synth pad synth pad synth pad synth pad kick snare patter *lion king ass grandiose singing for like 3-4 minutes* *a rap finally*

like jfc you don't have to repeat every fucking singing line like 27 times before you move on to the next part

this shit is not live to me at all, it's the opposite of everything i value in hip hop

been listening in fits and starts. the pop smoke moment is completely embarrassing. he didn't even bother trying to mix it into the rest of the song. it was clearly a voice note from pop's phone, complete with background noise and a very tinny drill beat that completely clashes with the main instrumental. the verse itself probably never should've seen the light of day, but of course v*ctor and co. will never turn down a check.