Beautiful Piece of Art, But Low Effort: DONDA, by Kanye West

Kanye West’s highly anticipated album, DONDA, is not quite what the public expected. Keeping its religious themes from Jesus is King, and being meant as an album to honor his mother is controversial with rap fans. This is due to controversial rapper DaBaby, and alleged sexual assaulter Marilyn Manson being on an album dedicated to Donda West. Three listening parties, showcasing different versions of songs, got immense excitement all around the world. Was it as good as people hoped?

I will be reviewing my top 3 favourite songs from the album, and my least favourite 3 from the album.

LEAST FAVOURITES

3. Hurricane (featuring. Lil Baby & The Weeknd) [produced. Kanye West, MIKE DEAN, Ronny J, BoogzDaBeast, Ojivolta, DJ Khalil & Nascent]

I would like to preface my review of Hurricane by stating my opinion on this track is incredibly subjective because I have been listening to the previous 21 leaked versions of this song. It is quite obvious that this track is meant as a lead single, media grabbing track. With The Weeknd, being probably the closest artist to Michael Jackson as of right now, and Lil Baby who has been making a buzz recently. This instrumental is dead compared to what it used to be, it sounds lifeless, and The Weeknd's boring chorus vocals add nothing to this track. Lil Baby sounds the same as he does on all his recent big hits, such as 'Girls Want Girls', 'Wants and Needs', and 'p r i d e . i s . t h e . d e v i l .' Kanye’s verse is really annoying, mainly due to the “mmm”’s. Overall, this track is pretty boring, the replay value on this track is near zero, and the features lessen the song due to their boring sounding voices on this mellowed out boring beat, rather than adding to it.

2. Remote Control (featuring. Young Thug, & Tony Halstead) [produced. Kanye West, Teddy Walton, Ojivolta, MIKE DEAN, CuBeatz, Digital Nas, & 88-Keys)

The chorus to Remote Control is the most obnoxious hip-hop chorus of 2021. The beat is great, the whistle and drum breaks sound great together, if you were to hear only the beat to this song you would expect one of Kanye’s best songs to date. Yet Kanye’s slow singing is irritating, and the lyrics are the opposite of catchy. Young Thug’s verse is alright, it is slow like Kanye’s part, and doesn’t compare to anything off of his recent work Slime Language 2, but is still better than Kanye’s part. Because this song is not something I would put on my playlist I just find Young Thug’s verse to be something fun to look forward to whenever my friends play this song. The song closes with the Globglogabgalab meme’s vocals, which is quite interesting to me. If you pay close enough attention you can tell Kanye literally used an “mp3 to acapella” website for these vocals, they’re not great quality and you can hear the kicks from the original song faintly in the background. It makes sense that this is a lazy song when you take into consideration the effort they probably put into this song.

1. Tell The Vision (featuring. Pop Smoke) [produced. Kanye West, FnZ, Ojivolta, & BoogzDaBeast]

Tell The Vision is an alternative version of Pop Smoke’s posthumous track, of the same name, featuring Kanye West & Pusha T. Pop Smoke’s song has no problems, it sounds good and there are no mixing problems. Now when I listen to Tell The Vision on DONDA, I can’t help but laugh. Because the song is censored, Pop Smoke’s vocals are awfully cut, background sounds come in right before he says his line, which sounds painfully awkward each time he raps. The original beat can be heard in the background, throughout the entire track. The beat on the two tracks are basically identical as well, but the version on DONDA is just pitched down a little bit, which makes this all the more hilarious. In my opinion, this is just a tribute done poorly to Pop Smoke

FAVOURITES

3. Praise God (featuring. Travis Scott & Baby Keem) [produced. Kanye West, MIKE DEAN, 30 Roc, Ojivolta, ZenTachi & Sloane]

This is another track off DONDA (2020), but made in 2019. Pusha T wrote Kanye and Travis Scott’s verses, and Donda West is sampled at the beginning during one of her English lectures. Travis Scott sounds great on the chorus, I find it to be very catchy with his pitch. I have often found myself reciting him and Kanye’s chorus in my head. Baby Keem delivers on his verse, it has catchy lyrics and specific parts of the verse are popular on social media, such as, “Bada the bada the boom, I bada the boom, I bada the bing” and the auto tune on his bridge. Keem’s verse is a good closure to the song, and the choice of ending the song with no outro was a good choice. The beat was a great choice, solid track.

2. Believe What I Say (featuring. Lauryn Hill) [produced. Kanye West, Ojivolta, Dem Jointz, Ojivolta, FnZ, BoogzDaBeast, AntMan Wonder]

Sampling Lauryn Hill’s 1998 track Doo Wop (That Thing), Kanye hops on a very disco-R&B themed beat. The pitched down sample sounds great, and honestly better than the original. The beat is bouncy and energetic, it gets you wanting to move and dance around. Kanye’s singing sounds soothing, and he doesn’t use autotune either. The Buju Banton vocals blend well with the beat, and the lyrical content doesn’t disappoint either, it is a great interlude to a great song. The chorus is super catchy with Kanye’s singing and the lyrics are simple to remember. Believe What I Say has incredible replay value, sampling one of Lauryn Hill’s most popular songs, catchy lyrics & melody, and the beat is astonishing.

1. Come To Life (produced. Kanye West, MIKE DEAN, Warryn Campbell, Jeff Bhasker, Chopsquad DJ & Ojivolta)

I have had an incredibly rough summer, especially the last week leading up to school. This song helped me a lot, surprisingly. The lyrics resonated with me, and Kanye genuinely sounds depressed singing that you can’t help but also feel his pain throughout the song. The production is outstanding, the piano keys sound straight out of a Studio Ghibli or Disney film, they are touching beyond belief. There is pure emotion and energy in this track, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was recorded in one go. Kanye vocalizes his past regrets with Kim, his mental health, his family, and how he doesn’t want to hurt his kids due to how he has hurt others with his personal wishes. This is the best Kanye West song since Ultralight Beam, and it may even be better. There are no words to describe this track, other than beautiful.

Bonus: https://pastebin.com/8BNV7raY (Bonus - Life of the Party [feat. Andre 3000]), https://pastebin.com/Cp28vExS (Bonus - Review)

Overall, this album is spectacular. The highs are extremely high, and the only lows are quite low, but there are only three lows. Kanye clearly had a vision in mind throughout this album, dedicated to his mother. All the features did their thing, and added a lot to their respective tracks. This album proves Kanye at 44 still has it in him to keep rapping at the same level to new generation rappers, such as Fivio Foreign & Lil Yachty. There are some mixing concerns throughout the album, they don’t take away my enjoyment, but when I listen to the tracks with more thought I wonder how they spent so much time on the album just to miss out on some small things. This album is Kanye fully fleshing out his ideas, the religious aspect of this album isn’t forced on the listener, like it was on Jesus Is King, instead while the themes are still present, Kanye presents them in a way where it doesn’t affect the song’s enjoyment. And while the features did their thing, there were too many features on this album. Donda was like The Life of Pablo, an all-star game of the best artists right now, you have the fan favourites in Lil Baby, Travis Scott and The Weeknd, you get your truly talented player in Don Toliver, and you get the underrated players in the view of the sport, in Vory. The Pt. 2’s on this album, such as “Ok Ok pt 2”, “Jail pt 2”, “Junya pt 2”, and “Jesus Lord pt 2” were very unnecessary. They were just a plethora of features added to tracks, and these tracks mean nothing to the vision of this album. Donda is truly touching, Kanye went through a lot during this album rollout, but I have to say, his feelings reached everyone, and this will go down as one of Kanye West’s greatest albums.