Even after six weeks, Kanye West’s album, Donda is still gaining popularity along with many mixed opinions, reviews, and comparisons to other popular albums. 

First announced during his presidential run, Kanye spent almost a year developing the album, releasing teasers and performing at listening parties leading up to the release. Donda features over 30 artists including Baby Keem, Pop Smoke, Don Toliver, Jay-Z, Kid Cudi, The Weeknd, Lil Baby, Future and Travis Scott.   

With the abrupt release of the album, Donda immediately broke records. In its first week, Donda sold 309,000 units followed by 146,000 the next week. Donda also was briefly the biggest debut of 2021 with 341 million streams the first week. Currently, in its sixth week Donda has roughly 881,653,326 streams on Spotify.

One of the most important aspects of Kanye’s advertising prior to release of the album was the three listening parties held in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz stadium and Chicago’s Soldier Field stadium. In Chicago, almost 40,000 attended, while in Atlanta over 40,000 attended both of the listening parties. Kanye also streamed the event on Apple Music for an Apple Music record of 5.4 million listeners.

One of the key aspects of Donda was the abrupt release. Vanya Weinstock ’23 commented, “I was pretty surprised. After he said he was going to release it and didn’t two times, I basically gave up on him releasing it. I listened to it straight through and was super shocked by all the features and thought it was amazing.”

While Donda was largely popular and had a positive reaction, some students believed there were negative aspects. 

Artese Brown ’23 said, “[Kanye] carefully taking time to make sure the features were right on the album was really good. The worst part was probably the intro. I understand the meaning behind it and I understand the real hidden message, but I feel like it was unnecessary and uncomfortable to listen to.” 

While the intro is part of the album, its main intent was to memorialize Kanye’s mother. “Donda ” was his mother’s name used in the chant that is repeated in a rhythm to mimic his passing mother’s heartbeat.

However, others believe that Donda had no flaws with its release process and songs. Wes Simpson ’22 commented, “I don’t really think there was a least favorite part. I think the rollout was really good because really no rapper was doing the listening parties like he was so that was something new, and I really just enjoyed the project as a whole.”

While Donda broke records, Drake’s Certified Lover Boy release soon challenged Donda as a top album. Many people began to compare the two projects to see who really is the king of rap. 

MFS student Nasir Harrison ’23 commented that “You shouldnt be comparing the two albums.  Donda is an ode to his mother and it’s an artistic masterpiece of music that’s not synchronized to make you go, oh wow that was so hard, it’s like listening to this and seeing how far Kanye has come. Certified Lover Boy is literally a flex, Drake is Drake and you can’t stop that. I’m not gonna compare them. I, as an artist, like Donda more but I understand why people like CLB, but there’s not a real comparison there.”