Kanye West — Donda 2

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With these words beautifully pronounced in spoken word, in a sad and almost suffering way, the rapper of the year closes the song of the year on the album of the year.

The album leaves you disoriented and in a mental state of great despondency, sadness and bitterness. With many more doubts than certainties than before the listening began. It takes away your reference points. I really don't know where to start to describe this. Let's start over.

Kanye West's career begins with two albums linked to socio-conscious themes ("The College Dropout" and "Late Registration"), then he makes a pop rap album ("The Graduation"), starts experimenting ("808s & Heartbreak"), makes the album richest in musical elements possible ("My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy") and the most minimal and poorest album in musical elements possible ("Yeezus"), after doing a couple of laps of honor celebrating first with Jay-Z ("Watch the Throne"), then with the guys from his label ("Cruel Summer"), so he gives in to drugs, believing he's comparing himself to the controversial and divisive figure of Pablo Escobar ("The Life of Pablo"), and then finally collapse digging into his own sick psyche ("ye"), returning with greater spirituality ("Kids See Ghosts") by virtue of being a born-again Christian ("Jesus is King" and "Jesus is Born"), who reflects on his mother's death and his own personal and family crisis ("Donda") culminating in a highly publicized divorce, which this latest project of his should deal with.

Every West album seems to be inspired by that of other artists, if not a copy. He starts posing — by his own admission in a recent interview, where he makes fun of Talib Kweli, guest on West's debut — as a backpack rapper, genre that the boy doesn't like, more linked to gangsta rap albums, and label to which he doesn't feel bound, revealing only after many years that he used that genre to build his artistic career. He borrows the structure of Jay-Z's "The Blueprint" ("The College Dropout" and "Late Registration"), continues taking inspiration from Lupe Fiasco's first albums ("The Graduation") and some eighties synthpop and electropop records mixed with T-Pain's debut ("808s & Heartbreak"), to albums full of samples and musically rich like Beastie Boys' "Paul Boutique" and DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing..." ("My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy") and to albums lacking in samples and close to the sound already expressed by groups such as Dalek and Death Grips, also similar to Run-DMC and LL Cool J records ("Yeezus"). He continues his artistic career approaching Jay-Z's "The Blueprint 3" ("Watch the Throne"), to Kid Cudi's most recent album ("Cruel Summer"), chasing the alternative scene led by Tyler, the Creator with "Cherry Bomb" ("The Life of Pablo"), trying to reach the summit reached by Chance the Rapper mixing gospel and hip-hop with "Coloring Book" ("ye", "Kids See Ghosts", "Jesus is King" and "Jesus is Born"), and now trying to shamelessly imitate Playboi Carti in order to steal fans, money and critical favors from him ("Donda" and "Donda 2").

Less than six months after his latest effort, Kanye West releases a sequel, "Donda 2", exclusively on the Stem Player streaming platform in exchange for $200. The choice leads to the end of a millionaire contract with Apple. It's also not eligible in the Billboard charts. Produced and recorded in less than two months, the album misses the expected release date and is available the following day, with four songs, the others are added the next day. The track "Keep It Burnin" is first inserted, then replaced by "True Love", while a finished version of "Keep It Burnin" is released on the new album from "Donda 2" main guest and executive producer Future. Production is done by no-names, except for DJ Premier, Hit-Boy (both on the first single), The Chainsmoker (on the second single) and Mike Dean. Ojivolta is the main producer, as in the prequel.

In addition to Future, guests include The Game, Fivio Foreign, Playboi Carti, Alicia Keys, XXXTentacion, Migos, Baby Keem, Don Toliver, Travis Scott, Jack Harlow, Vory, Sean Leon and Soulja Boy. More or less everyone disappoints with sub-standard performance, except for Soulja Boy, who destroys West in his own cut of "First Time in a Long Time", a few months after getting pissed off at him for excluding him from a song on "Donda" (and it wasn't the first time it happened), because West didn't think he was good enough to include him. Kid Cudi should be on this record, but because of his friendship with Pete Davidson, West's ex-wife Kim Kardashian's new boyfriend and West's new enemy, the Chicago rapper decides to publicly cut Kid Cudi's contributions from his new LP, citing how Cudi is now no longer loyal to West. Kid Cudi doesn't appear on a West album for the 2nd time in the last 11 (including collaborative ones).

Kanye West's is not a finished album, the author plans to update it as he has already done in the past with other records by him, nevertheless, these intentions aren't realized. Originally there was a concept and a cover to represent it, Kanye returns to his burning house to deal with his family problems, but the concept is never adequately explored. Then the cover is removed and the album finds itself without a cover, like the previous one, maintaining a title that suggests this is a sequel to "Donda", even if it never deals with themes relating to the artist's mother of the same name.

The lyrics are mainly aimed at his relationship with West's ex-wife and her new partner: the texts are so bad that they're considered the worst the man has ever written and the author hasn't shone for the quality of his lyricism in recent years, in fact the same phrase can be used to describe many of his latest records. They appear to have been copied from an automatic text generator.

Kanye West performance is disarming, it takes away the strength and the desire to continue listening, he's the worst version of himself, it's hard to believe: he never seems to be focused, he recites these ridiculous, embarrassing, disastrous lyrics in a stuttering, mumbled delivery, his voice doesn't come out and is covered by an abuse of autotune, not even the hooks work. The music is generic trap, amateur, full of synths, bad beats. For the first time on a Kanye West album no one is credited for mixing and it's no surprise if you listen to these tracks, because it seems like the mixing part is missing. There are no ideas, there's no imagination, the author almost steps aside to let the guests make his album, but this doesn't work either: songs come out without a defined structure, half unfinished, scribbled, tied with a thin thread of string and held together by spit.

After revisiting Kanye West's entire discography from the beginning, I'm aware that a difficult task awaits anyone in the future who wants to face the same journey in the catalog of a character who has gone far beyond the boundaries of music. Fashion designer, entrepreneur, philanthropist, actor, director, politician. Kanye West has done a lot, often badly, outside of music. For some time now he has often been doing badly even within music.

This product is difficult to comment and describe. It's a joke, a greyish, stale, confusing and inconclusive mess. Inadmissible. Unlistenable. It's harder to stomach than anything West has ever released before, in any other era and for any other artist this would have been a certain artistic suicide. The main reaction of fans to this release is the great common denominator with reviews from professional critics who have decided to treat this release by panned it and placing appalling ratings which could be seen as "dishonorable" to the casual eye: they're all praying for this guy to stop making music and that he gets better as quickly as possible.

Rating: 0/10.