Kan’, Duh

The Christian overtones make this album the splendor and grandeur that it is. Just as America is not a white nation; though people lacking melanin predominate the nation. America is not a Christian nation; despite the number of Catholics, Protestants, and Non-denominational constituents that outnumber non-believers in the United States.

It seems as if everyone was on the same page on this monumental work. I listen back to the beginning. on Kanye (is he Ye yet?) West’s seminal work The College Dropout (2004), his first masterpiece, JAY Z rhymes about his sterling career and ability to compare himself to everyone from Jeff Gordon to the late Pope John Paul II. It seemed apt but at the same time all over the place. Kanye West raps about his:

Grandfather who took my momma,

Made her sit in that seat where white Folks ain’t want us to eat.

Then there’s a spoken word section by poet J. Ivey which coincides with spiritualism but not JAY-Z’s boasts or West’s politicalism.

Here, though, hardcore rappers like Lil’ Baby and fresh from controversy himself, DaBaby, all turn in songs that speak to the mysticism that runs rampant through America and the world. Through muted expletives, West chooses to release only one version of the album like his previous effort Jesus is King (2019).

What this may mean is that the tipping point for atheism may ironically take hold in the mind of at least one listener of the millions who absorb the nearly two hour piece. Why? The cognitive dissonance espoused by Donda where secular street talk meets mystified outpourings of grief, comedy (see West’s take on Adam’s rib on the song “Off the Grid”) and virtually every other emotion that a human can experience.

Rapper Lil’ Durk discusses his fallen brother. Artist Westside Gunn on “Keep My Spirit Alive” speaks on disposing of drugs before law enforcement “raided.”

The album plays like an audible major motion picture. Most of West’s albums do the same but this is on such a greater scale than any of his other previous projects.

From the constant chanting at the beginning of the album performed by the beautiful gem, Syleena Johnson, to the close with Larry Hoover Jr., the album strikes, meanders, uplifts, and knocks down in an experience that can alter the believer and make him into an atheist. How? As this album continues to break records, people will witness how the messiness of belief is ineffectual. From Friday and Saturday nights at the strip club to Sunday mornings in church; from the altruism that is embodied in belief to the arrogance and braggadocio that is part of the genre; to the sincerity before Jesus but cynicism before friends and family; the ideal must fall like a giant with a weak spot against a slingshot and rock.

Playboi Carti raps “I just bought new clothes” and then hints that they’re from haute couture fashion house Givenchy. Isn’t this just another reflection back to Dropout where West raps “We buy a lotta clothes but we don’t really need ‘em”? The tone is obviously somber throughout. The constant references to his deceased mother, (Dr. Donda West who of course lends the album its title) and audio clips of her sounding as bonafide and distinguished as the late Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison.

The whole album plays like everything that labels say you should and shouldn’t do (have enough guest appearances to save the album) and throw away any sense of editing down the album (to maintain attention), respectively.

Donda is far from the conventional album. The number of songs to the consistency in the idea that darkness means depth (finally). But throughout, the effort displays moments of levity. It even challenges West’s idea about his dissolved marriage and his four children. The sprawling music is so profound because West didn’t need to do it.

With almost two billion dollars in the bank, West worked on this just as much as other grandiose works like Late Registration (2005) and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010). This collection of songs is West’s fifth masterpiece along with the aforementioned Dropout, Late, Dark Fantasy, and Yeezus (2013). While this last work snarls and growls with magnificent menace, profane imagery, and bombast, this sound is more like 808’s and Heartbreak (2008) meets Jesus.

Euphemisms and clever wordplay lend to the greatness of Donda. The direction that West flies in reflects the mindstate of a faithful psychiatric out-patient. West’s bipolar disorder, contrary to popular belief, does not propel his art. It is his skill and ability and also not his position as a man of the unknown and unknowable.

He kept the piece light at some points to alleviate the listener from being mired down in their worries and self-deceptions. West disallows his audience to hear anything that doesn’t particularly ring true. Everything that he does marks a truth that he sees. He has yet to discover reality that writer and philosopher Ayn Rand paints in her colossal oeuvre.

Rapper Soulja Boy and R&B singer Chris Brown are among the subjective haters who have denounced West and this album. By taking to social media, both artists spat on West’s efforts. At the same time, would they say they’re atheists, individualists, and egoists rather than mystics, collectivists, and altruists? It would appear that these lesser performers, although brilliant at times, reflect the emotion driven genre of hip hop. Both of them could never achieve the heights that Donda reaches, even if Brown recorded 45 tracks for Heartbreak on a Full Moon (2018) and Soulja Boy recorded sixty-two mixtapes, they could never capture the majesty and ebullience of Donda. Far from regular power or vapidity, this soundtrack like piece of music bests the subjective hate that these talented artists exhibit otherwise.

West could be just making sounds and unintelligible grunts at this point. In fact, he has done that on rapper Pusha T’s excellent work, Daytona (2018). He didn’t have to make such a wondrous work like this, but he did just that. Duh.