Kanye West’s Donda Ends With Surprise Last-Minute Jay-Z Collab
Kanye West is seemingly on track to release his new album, Donda, tomorrow. Rumors started circulating about a new West album last weekend and he threw a listening party at a Las Vegas church on Sunday. He held an even larger listening party on Thursday night. It was scheduled to begin at 8PM ET and got started around 9:50PM, wrapping up an hour later. It took place at the Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta. The event was sold out (West reportedly gifted 5,000 tickets to faculty, staff, and students from the city’s HBCUs, per WABE) but it streamed live for Apple Music subscribers. If you are one of those, you can watch it here.
The version of Donda that West played at the listening party featured appearances by Jay-Z, Pop Smoke, Travis Scott, Pusha T, Baby Keem, Lil Baby, Lil Durk, and more. According to some West associates, it was being mixed by Mike Dean right up to the last minute, and Jay recorded his verse this afternoon.
According to TMZ, Kim Kardashian and all four of their children were in attendance at the listening party. Kardashian filed for divorce from Kanye earlier this year.
A couple days ago, West previewed a new song called “No Child Left Behind” in an advertisement starring Sha’Carri Richardson, the elite sprinter who was controversially left off the US Olympic team after testing positive for legal marijuana.
This will be West’s first album since 2019’s Jesus Is King.
UPDATE: Here are some clips and an alleged tracklist.
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