Because it was inevitable, Kanye West’s new album Donda, which was finally released yesterday, is currently dominating the music charts. Much to Kanye’s dismay. Despite the $40 hot dogs, countdown clock, having blown through an entire box of nylon footies he picked up from Lady Footlocker and literally setting himself on fire, Kanye wasn’t ready. In an Instagram post, Kanye complains that “Universal put my album out without my approval and they blocked Jail 2 from being on the album.” According to Complex, the Jail 2 track referenced features Marilyn Manson and DaBaby, those two wet sacks of garbage that were sitting on Kanye’s front porch during the 3rd Donda listening party.
Sadly, the trash wasn’t taken out and disposed of in a responsible manner. Complex reports that “a denial from alleged UMG (Universal Music Group) sources calls the charge ‘preposterous,” and the tack has since been added to the other 26. Yes, I said 26! Why in my day, rap albums were 15 tracks top and half of them were interludes about smoking weed and fucking, whereas Donda is about 15 tracks too long and Kim Kardashian. Here’s Kanye’s post.
I’m personally convinced that the reason Kanye used Instagram to deliver this message over his preferred method of Unhinged Twitter Storm is that his most recent Tweet is his Kanye 2024 tweet and he doesn’t want to muck up the timeline. I humbly submit the following in support of this theory Yahoo! News reports:
Donda is 26 songs long, including several part-two versions of records that aren’t on the official release.
West initially said Def Jam/Universal Music released the album without DaBaby on “Jail, Pt. 2.” The song has now been added to streaming services. In now-deleted text messages to manager Abou “Bu” Thiam, West wrote that he wasn’t taking DaBaby off the album, adding, “He was the only person who said he would vote for me in public.”
UK music magazine The Independent has declined to review the album, giving it 0 stars and writing, in part: “West is evidently surrounded by a team who are too scared or too exhausted to say ‘no’, but it speaks volumes of society’s apathy towards rape survivors that Universal would release this album with Manson on it.”
Two artists who didn’t make the cut, Soulja Boy and Chris Brown, are equally outraged. Yahoo! reports that Soulja Boy recorded a verse for the song Remote Control, and was surprised to find that it had been left off the album. So he vented about it on Twitter. And while we don’t know if Chris had also contributed a track, he took to his Instagram stories to call Kanye “an asshole.” So, congratulations to these broken clocks.
As for the content of Donda, as expected Kim is the subject of a few of the tracks, as is the Calabasas Haunted Mausoleum and Kanye’s “new chick” Irina Shayk. And according to E! News, Kanye, and Kim are definitely not getting back together, despite her involvement in the Donda rollout.
While many fans speculated that her gesture symbolized a reconciliation, it was not. “She knew how much this meant to him and was honored to be involved,” a source close to Kim told E! News. “The wedding dress was symbolic of their relationship and for the song. It was not a vow renewal. There is still so much love between the two, but they aren’t reconciling.”
References to Kim pop up a few times on the tracks Hurricane and Lord I Need You. On Hurricane, Kanye stupidly asks Kim “what do you love?” without first covering all the mirrors in the house.
On the track, Kanye raps, “Heated by the rumors, read into it too much / Fiendin’ for some true love, ask Kim, ‘What do you love?’ / Hard to find what the truth is, but the truth was that the truth suck / Always seem to do stuff, but this time it was too much.”
In the same track, Kanye raps “here I go actin’ too rich, here I go with a new chick,” probably referencing Irina though E! assures us “it was never serious” and raps “got very busy with work/were in different places/kind of fizzled out/there’s a lot of mutual respect.” Talk about a mic drop!
As for the haunted mausoleum, on the track Hurricane, Kanye raps, “Architectural Digest, but I needed home improvement/Sixty-million-dollar home, never went home to it.” As we know, Kanye spent most of the past couple of years in Wyoming, off the grid, as indicated in the track, Off The Grid, which he did for his kids. Only kids doesn’t rhyme so he just repeated the word “kid” a bunch of times to indicate a plurality of kids.
“Off the Grid” includes the lyrics, “Had to move away from people that’s miserable” and “We off the grid, grid, grid / This for my kid, kid, kid, kid / For when my kid, kid, kids have kids / Everything we did for the crib.”
On OFG, Kanye also says of Kim “I pray that my family they never resent me / And she fell in love with me as soon she met me.” Kim is also featured prominently on Lord I Need You on which he raps “You know you’ll always be my favorite prom queen” and “When you said give me a ring, you really meant a ring, huh?/Turned out to be more than just a fling, huh?” I mean the way he was going on about abortion not that long ago, maybe she meant a Nuva Ring? But, that’s water over the bridge. Kanye’s got jokes about that now.
“Cussin’ at your baby mama,” Kanye raps. “Guess that’s why they call it custody.”
Here are some more lyrics from the tracks LINY and Jail where Kanye touches on freedom, single life, and that time he changed his phone number so Kim couldn’t talk to him.
On the song, Kanye alludes to a relationship break or breakup. The track includes the lyrics, “Startin’ to feel like you ain’t been happy for me lately, darlin’ / ‘Member when you used to come around and serenade me, woah / But I guess it’s gone different in a different direction lately / Tryna do the right thing with the freedom that you gave me.”
Kanye sings, “Better that I change my number so you can’t explain.”
Also on “Jail,” Kanye sings, “Guess who’s getting ‘exed? / You made a choice that’s your bad, single life ain’t so bad.”
Shiiiiiit, if getting rid of Kim was really as easy as changing your phone number, area codes would have to be 4-digits long to keep up with the demand.
Pic: Wenn.com