Jay-Z once famously compared his discography to a Rubik’s Cube, explaining: “Every album’s a color, but I fuck up the other color.” It’s a legacy balancing act that any artist can relate to, but no one is embodying it right now more than Jay’s “little brother” Kanye West, who has spent half of the summer publicly tinkering with his tenth studio album Donda. Last night, West held a third stadium listening session for the album (his fourth overall, counting a July event in Las Vegas that wasn’t streamed), this time in Chicago’s Soldier Field following back-to-back takeovers of Atlanta’s Mercedes Benz Stadium. And judging from the version of Donda that West played last night at Soldier Field, he’s on the verge of fucking up a lot of the colors.
For his last four albums, West has been testing fans’ patience with his propensity to delay, tweak, release, then tweak some more. So it was no surprise that the initial July 23 iteration of Donda sounded closer to rough demos than a mastered album. But it was a pleasant shock when West returned from his self-imposed two-week cram session with an album that sounded pretty damn close to finished. (Though as we now know, its release is probably mired in the latest flare-up in West’s eternal pissing match with Drake.)
Donda, version 2 retained the highlights of Donda v1—a Jay-Z reunion, sterling features from Roddy Ricch, Playboi Carti and Lil Baby, and some of the best Ye tracks we’ve heard in years—and expanded on them with one brilliant new addition after another. This very magazine prompted West to call in The Weeknd, a titanic Verzuz win inspired him to fly in the red-hot LOX, and every song that sounded promising on original-recipe Donda was sharpened and refined with blockbuster effects. But that album never came. And the version West played at Soldier Field isn’t better for the extra effort.
Everything about last night’s presentation felt off. Where Ye’s last turn in Atlanta saw him recreate the locker room he’d been living in while masked gothic dancers swirled around him, West made his Chicago homecoming literal by building an exact replica of his childhood house in the middle of the stadium. This time, the dancers were dressed in bulletproof vests bearing West’s mother’s name, periodically marching in circles alongside a fleet of vehicles in a way that eerily resembled a funeral procession. Atlanta’s Donda v2 show had West running around in capes and pantomiming working out, having nightmares, and taking heated phone calls. It was baffling, but fascinating to watch. At Soldier Field, a face-masked West and a handful of the featured guests like Travis Scott, Don Toliver, and Shenseea sat around on the porch or loitered around the grounds. Somehow we went from Phantom of the Opera to Friday.
And those were the non-problematic guests on hand. Where it was thrilling to see Kanye leap on a trending topic and invite The LOX in for a feature on Donda v2, his instincts went haywire for Donda v3 at Soldier Field. West’s thirst for ripped-from-the-timeline relevance led him to invite none other than DaBaby. That was just the insertion of the knife though. The twist? DaBaby replaced Jay-Z on “Jail,” sacrificing the long awaited “return of the Throne” for a cheap shot at the cry babies and boogeymen who comprise “cancel culture.” (DaBaby is a gifted lyricist in his own way—surely there are some impressive bars in there but nothing that sticks to the ribs and creates a capital-M moment the way Jay’s presence did.) And to hammer home the message, Kanye also invited Marilyn Manson, who’s facing a series of rape and sexual assault allegations, to stand—literally—alongside them. One wonders if Jay-Z was kicked off the ride, or, given the new features, asked to get off.
The headscratching changes and omissions didn’t stop there. West also removed verses from The LOX and Conway The Machine, plus Kid Cudi’s two features. Alterations to the production and mixing of crowd pleasers like “Hurricane” or “New Again” were made, and not for the better. The album’s sequencing went haywire. (“Jail” at one point ended the album; now it’s the opener.)
Not that Donda v3 is a full flop. The rare highlights: a stunning new Kanye verse on “Off the Grid” are the hardest Kanye West bars in maybe five years (and the track blessedly still includes Fivio Foreign’s star-making feature, from which his relationship with West has blossomed into Kanye executive producing Fivio’s debut album). There’s a new track that beautifully samples Ms. Lauryn Hill, and a new track that’s somehow more crushing than anyone could’ve imagined, even on an album named after West’s late mother and inspired in part by his impending divorce.
About that divorce: it might be off as of last night. On a song that West added to Donda v2, he rapped of Kim: “Time and space is a luxury/But you came here to show that you still in love with me.” It seems true: Kim didn’t just pull up to Solider Field to show her support, she played a major part in closing the show out. After watching West and his collaborators play stoop kid for the better part of an hour, that searingly sad new track gave way to the album closer, “No Child Left Behind.” In Atlanta, he ascended to the heavens to close the show. In Chicago, as the emo vibes crescendoed, West walked out of his childhood home and literally burst into flames like a vampire hit with sunlight. When he emerged, it was mask off—his first time doing so publicly in months—and in front of Kim, who walked the field in a wedding dress during guest Vory’s dulcet croons. Kanye lifted her veil and then…Sopranos-smash-cut to black. The show was over, and it sure looked like we just watched a 90-minute vow renewal ceremony.
Kanye’s clearly been working on his demons as much as he has Donda during this never-ending rollout. It’s sweet to think this whole thing could end up doubling as successful couples therapy. But that doesn’t fix a flawed album that sounds like it’s moving in the wrong direction, both the music and the features. Maybe there’s hope: though West’s stayed uncharacteristically quiet (save a few tweets fired Drake’s way), his process has been heavily tuned into fan feedback. It’d be great if, like with “Wolves,” Kanye heard the crowd and fixed his overcorrections. Though it’d also be great if he just dropped Donda already.
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