Pitchfork: Donda 2 (V2.22.22 Miami)

[COOOK 76,406]

"Released exclusively on a device called the Stem Player, the first version of Kanye’s 11th album is lackluster and undercooked. It does not bode well for any future updates or revamps. "

Spoiler

" For all the theatrics, mythmaking, and assholery that come along with a Kanye West album, at the center of it all used to be the music. I challenge anyone to watch the first two episodes of jeen-yuhs, the new three-part documentary about West’s early years, and not come away feeling a little bit nostalgic for a bygone era. Times when the hunger in Kanye’s raps could consume you like they did Mos Def, who looked on in awe as Ye rapped an a capella version of “Two Words.” Or when his irrational confidence and drive had this innocent charm to it, like the scenes of him going door to door in the Roc-a-Fella offices trying to get anyone he could to listen to “All Falls Down.” 

The documentary began shooting years before the release of his debut album, 2004’s The College Dropout, a project Kanye and the directors approach as not just another batch of songs, but a soul-wrenching outpouring. An album nurtured and stressed over. An album that bum-rushed through industry politics, skeptics, and even a near-death experience. An album Kanye believed in so wholeheartedly that even before it lifted him from the shadows to the limelight, he spoke about it as if the world would stop spinning without it.

Somewhere along the way—I might point to the era around The Life of Pablo and I’m sure some would say earlier—that ego was no longer a piece of the art, but the art itself. The music became an afterthought, a mere bullet point in a Kanye machine more concerned with clothing lines, Forbes list rankings, and a pivot to “free thinking,” an excuse to pretend his dumb tweets and political stances were actually genius.

True to this direction, Donda 2, the sequel to last year’s Donda, is not chiefly concerned with the music. It hasn’t even been officially labeled Donda 2 yet—instead, it’s designated “V2.22.22 Miami” (the date and location of the most recent Donda 2 listening party) like it’s an iOS update. That seems to be what Kanye wants anyway. The album was released exclusively on the Stem Player, a $200 gadget that he believes is revolutionary new technology but is really a glorified iPod Shuffle. (You would think the device that is going to change the game would be able to hold more than 8GB.) The tennis ball-sized contraption allows you to isolate a specific element of a song, an idea that is fine for about five minutes until you realize listening to a song is way more fun without having to choose your own adventure through it. The 16 tracks uploaded on the device so far are hardly even finished. The idea of the Stem Player is that Kanye will update and revamp the album as he sees fit, which some may laud as innovative or iconoclastic, but it comes off as an excuse to put out lackluster, undercooked music and label it as a fluid, ever-changing art piece that may never be complete. Does this inherently make Donda 2 somewhat critic-proof?

It does not. This crudely unfinished dump of songs is hiding behind a spectacle. But unlike the G.O.O.D Friday buildup to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy or the Madison Square Garden fashion show before The Life of Pablo, this spectacle is not designed to draw attention to the music but to distract from how Kanye’s passion has shifted: from making some of the most culture-defining albums of the last two decades to dreaming of being spoken about in the same breath as Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. "

Full review here.

Previous scores:

         

         

[Teletubby 136,731]

[Bloody hooker 6,445]

6 minutes ago, Teletubby said:

Peppa is the moment. A true MPG

[TimisaMonster 31,073]

Inb4 he blames and attacks the industry for conspiring against his woke album and "genius" concepts...

[Dr Fudge 8,599]

I haven’t kept up with the clown show release of Donda 2. I remember it didn’t arrive on time and a couple days after it’s supposed release date there had been like 5 tracks that were finally released or something like that. Did he finally drop the album in full? 
 

Edit: just read the review and indeed 16 tracks were dropped. Still messy af. 

[Ceres 3,205]

why does it look like my smoke detector?

[Damon 10,896]

donda was pretty much okay, there are some good ass moments but the record overall is average and too long so of course a follow-up to this would indeed be messier

[Anderson123 35,927]

I'm curios to hear if the Tim Skold produced songs even made the cut. There are no credits on this yet.

[ProfessionalClown 10,640]

1 minute ago, Anderson123 said:

I'm curios to hear if the Tim Skold produced songs even made the cut. There are no credits on this yet.

They weren’t, I’m assuming it’s either for a later project or they didn’t finish in time