By the beginning of 2021, the album seemed to be permanently on ice. (In: вЂњ Believe What I Say.вЂќ Out: 2020 single вЂњ Wash Us In the Blood.вЂќ) Meanwhile, the second half of KanyeвЂ™s 2020 was raucous: In July he announced his last-minute presidential candidacy, shortly after which his wife Kim Kardashian revealed that Kanye, who had previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, had undergone a mental health evaluation following his first candidate rally.ДЄs Kanye rushed to get his name on the ballot in time for the election, and as his marriage grew shakier, the album and its promotion fell by the wayside. The initial July 24, 2020, release date came and went without comment, but throughout the next year, Kanye continued to drop hints and clips of songs he was planning to include, only some of which made it onto the final album. A few days after his first tweet, he tweeted again, this time with a largely different track list, featuring 12 songs, six of which made the final album cut. However, much of the early information about the album and its contents seemed destined for retraction: Not only did Kanye rescind the initial release date, but of the 20 original songs he listed in his deleted tweet, only eight wound up on the final version of the album. On July 18, 2020, Kanye followed up JafaвЂ™s leak by tweeting, then deleting, a track list for the album, with its title changed to Donda, along with a release date for the album set just six days hence, on July 24. News broke of the albumвЂ™s existence a few months later, when cinematographer Arthur Jafa leaked the info during a radio interview. Initial recording for Donda - the follow-up album to 2019вЂ™s Jesus Is King - reportedly commenced in Mexico in March of 2020, at which point Kanye was apparently planning to title the album GodвЂ™s Country. Donda, like its creator, spent most of the last two years in flux With Kanye veering between politics, spirituality, and the music career that made him a legend, Donda has had a long, wild road to creation - and its public and critical reception are proving to be just as unpredictable. Still, it can provide insight into KanyeвЂ™s continued popularity, despite his spending an erratic few years making headlines for everything but his music. With the album, its rollout, and Kanye himself all in such a state of upheaval, Donda may be less an album and more of a seminal pop culture event. Meanwhile, Kanye himself has lashed out at his record label, Universal Music, in an Instagram post claiming the studio put out the album without his permission and even blocked one track, вЂњJail pt 2,вЂќ from the initial release. ThatвЂ™s because Donda seems to be generating more and more buzz as the days pass, as wildly polarized reviews have rolled in from critics, who say the album is disjointed and thematically incoherent, and fans who say itвЂ™s beautiful and a collaborative powerhouse. But even if DrakeвЂ™s Friday release eclipses KanyeвЂ™s, it likely wonвЂ™t top Donda for sheer intrigue.

How those two giants wound up going head to head with back-to-back album releases is an additional part of DondaвЂ™s mystique.

The album is already on track to score the biggest debut of 2021, although DrakeвЂ™s forthcoming album Certified Lover Boy, due out on September 3, might immediately challenge KanyeвЂ™s sales title. When it was finally released early in the morning on August 29, Donda smashed first-day streaming records and claimed the second-biggest Spotify album debut in history, racking up 94 million and 60 million streams on Spotify and Apple Music respectively. (The listening parties quickly became a form of elite cultural currency, with fans who attended treating each concert like a bougie Met Gala you can reportedly buy air from the concerts if you have $60,000 or so.) A string of pre-release listening parties saw thousands of listeners flocking to stadiums in Atlanta and Chicago for dramatic previews of the album.

The release delays after an initial July 23 drop date helped give Donda one of the most drawn-out and lucrative hype cycles for a release in recent memory. Reportedly in production for the last 18 months, Donda has had a rocky road to release, as delay upon delay befell the albumвЂ™s production and Kanye wrestled with a high-profile divorce, mental health battles, and clashes with his album collaborators. These arenвЂ™t the typical questions you associate with an album release, but Kanye West isnвЂ™t a typical artist, and his new 27-track album, Donda (named after KanyeвЂ™s late mother Donda West), isnвЂ™t a typical album. So whatвЂ™s the deal with Donda? Did Kanye WestвЂ™s label really release it without his permission? Did Kanye really light himself on fire over it? What about the TikTok panic that he inducted the huge audiences at his listening parties into some dark occult ritual?

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