Kanye West premieres his new album “Donda”

July 23, 2021

It is set to drop tomorrow.

Kanye West premiered his new album Donda last night at an event broadcast live from Atlanta in the USA. 

The album, which is due for an official release tomorrow, features the below collaboration with JAY-Z—their first together since they both appeared on Drake’s 2016 song “Pop Style.” Pop Smoke, Travis Scott, Pusha T, Baby Keem, Lil Baby, Lil Durk, and more also appear on the album. 

One surprise was fiery guest verse from Jay-Z on the album’s last song, apparently titled “Guess Who’s Going to Jail Tonight?” Jay’s verse is from the perspective of a man in prison and references the good and the bad times with Kanye West. Unconfirmed reports say that Jay recorded his verse on Thursday afternoon, just hours before the listening event. Maybe that is why the event started two hours later than the scheduled time.

The event, which was highly anticipated by Kanye’s fans, was streamed live on Apple Music. As the album played, Kanye performed at the center of the stadium without a mic. After a first song featuring the repeated phrase “we’re gonna be OK,” a second track featured a prominent sample of Kanye’s late mother Donda West and a feature from Pusha T.

The third song featured extensive references to designer Junya Watanabe as Kanye mentioned this week’s big win by the Milwaukee Bucks.

Kanye kicked off the release campaign of the album this week when he shared the cover art on Instagram alongside an Apple ad featuring new track “No Child Left Behind”. 

Kanye had originally scheduled Donda (formerly also called Donda: With Child) for release in July 2020, but he was delayed and decided to push the album back a year. 

Kanye has had a quiet 2021 so far, although his album “Jesus is king” won best Contemporary Christian Music Album at the Grammys.