Acoustic Avenues: Kanye’s ode to his mom

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Morgan Kong

In this weekly column, senior Emily Thomas provides her take on a new albums, concerts, and artists.

Ana Toro, Staff Reporter

After weeks of waiting, Kanye finally dropped his highly anticipated Donda, named after his mom. I waited for this album for a while, and was fooled every time I thought Kanye would drop it. Though it was a long few weeks of feeling like an idiot for actually believing Kanye, I can now say that I will review this album for you all.

First things first, I want to say that I have nothing but respect for Kanye’s artistic abilities. I don’t particularly like him as a person but I do recognize his musical genius. I was really expecting something great from this album so I was a little disappointed with what I got.

I did have a few favorites from the album, but they weren’t so good that I would listen to them all the time. I liked “Hurricane,” “Jail,” and “Off the Grid.” There wasn’t much about these songs that I enjoyed other than the production. They sounded nice and had cool lyrics. The one I listen to the most is “Jail” because it just sounds the best out of all of them.

I will say that even though I didn’t really enjoy the album as much as I wanted to, Kanye did outdo himself when it came to features. He got so many artists on this album it sounded like a choir. But then again, if Kanye comes calling for you to be on his album, can you really say no?

Another thing I did feel strongly throughout this album were Kanye’s emotions. You can tell he worked hard on it and he poured his heart and soul into it. His lyrics were not super complex but they did cut deep sometimes. I also did like how we got to hear him sing more on this album. I thought he had a really beautiful voice, which is not something you can say often in hip hop since most artists use autotune nowadays.

I hate to say that I was disappointed with this album, but I was. The listening party that Kanye held at the Mercedes Benz stadium in Atlanta had generated a lot of hype. It led me to believe that it would be his best release ever. I think the excitement for Donda was better than the actual album which is saying a lot because Kanye doesn’t make bad albums (with the exception of Jesus is King). 

Overall I’d probably give Donda a 5/10 and I wouldn’t highly recommend it to anyone. I hope that there is more that Kanye has to offer and will offer in the future.