Kanye West’s ‘Donda’ hasn’t dropped yet as promised: ‘Kanye still trolling y’all’
So where’s “Donda”?
Kanye West held a mega-listening party to premiere his 10th studio album at a stadium in Atlanta on Thursday and livestreamed the event via Apple Music. But as of Friday afternoon, he has failed to release the album after its 9 p.m. Pacific drop time came and went Thursday night.
“The event in Atlanta was much more somber than his raucous, stage-filling ‘The Life of Pablo’ event at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 2016,” The Times’ August Brown and Mikael Wood wrote in a story about the listening party.
“Yes, he was extremely late (and possibly even still finishing the album at call time), but the crowd had patience and seemed to respond in kind to the layers of grief suffusing this record. Kanye used ‘Donda’ to work out his loneliness and bewilderment, and the audience met him where he was at.”
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Longtime fans and watchers didn’t seem too surprised about the missing music, as the rapper has a track record of not delivering on time as he tinkers until the last minute. (Exhibit A: 2016’s delayed “The Life of Pablo.”)
“Kanye still trolling y’all,” Jamil “Mal” Clay, former co-host of “The Joe Budden Podcast,” tweeted Friday.
“Me thinking I was gonna wake up to a new Kanye West album #DONDA,” tweeted @killtrasher, posting a gif of Mr. Rogers putting on a clown mask.
And keeping with that theme, @giozxx tweeted a picture of a person in full clown costume sitting at a computer with the caption, “how i looked thinking i was going to wake up to kanye’s new album, stayed up till 12 yesterday and nothing dropped #DONDA.”
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Others were less accepting, including @fbgwayno, who wrote, “not eating until Donda drops.” User @k2luvspritebean replied, “sigh i hate waiting. i really hope it comes out later today or something.”
Meanwhile, on West’s most recent Instagram post, the bulk of the comments were either excited blurts about the album coming out or impatient ones asking where it was. One person kept saying the rapper had simply forgotten to release “Donda,” while another wondered, “did we seriously just get finessed again.”
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A West rep at Universal Music didn’t respond immediately Friday to a question from The Times about when “Donda” was really going to be released.
“Donda” was first teased in March 2020 and set for a June 2020 release, but was delayed amid the pandemic and West’s pending divorce. Despite the ongoing divorce proceedings, estranged wife Kim Kardashian West and their four children were reported to be in attendance in Atlanta on Thursday night.
The new album is named for Donda West, Kanye’s mom, who died in 2007 at age 58 while recovering from plastic surgery. It follows West’s ninth album, 2019’s Christian-themed “Jesus Is King.”
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