Donda is proving to be a lifelong project for Kanye West, who has been silently tinkering away at his tenth album and uploading updated versions of the record to streaming services.
The starkest change to the record was the removal of Chris Brown from the album track ‘New Again.’ There are theories floating around that West’s decision to scrap Brown’s feature from the record was fuelled by personal reasons as much as creative.
Following the release of Donda, Brown took to Instagram stories to decry how minor his feature in the track was, calling Kanye West a “whole hoe” in a swiftly deleted Instagram Story.
Brown followed it up by posting the full version of his Donda contribution on Instagram, “The verse/chorus I mysteriously didn’t do!”, he wrote.
In addition to scrapping Breezy’s verse, West also removed a verse from Kenyan rapper KayCyy from ‘Keep My Spirit Alive’, though he’s kept his contributions on ‘Hurricane.’
The album also sports mixing tweaks, notably on his contentious single ‘Jail Pt 2’, which features DaBaby and Marilyn Manson. In the days leading up to the release, Kanye copped widespread backlash for collaborating with the two artists: DaBaby was recently embroiled in a scandal after making homophobic remarks, and Manson, uh, you can read about that here.
Kanye claimed that Universal Music released Donda without his approval, he also claims that they blocked ‘Jail Pt 2’ from the album. “Universal put my album out without my approval and they blocked ‘Jail 2’ from being on the album,” he said at the time.
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For all those interested in an in-depth analysis on the changes made to Donda thus far, the Kanye West podcast Watch The Throne breaks it all down, check it out below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng3_nLQxisY&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=WatchingtheThrone
