DONDA

After a few days of rumors, Kanye West confirmed yesterday that he will be hosting a third Donda listening event, but this time, he’s heading to Soldier Field in his hometown of Chicago. After West shared the news on social media, somebody in his camp offered some more details about the event, revealing that there will be some differences from previous iterations.

West associate Ameer Sudan told Billboard yesterday that the new event is upping its production value, saying, “Expect a more detailed show on a whole other level.”

Furthermore, he said that Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia will also be creative director for the event, as he did for the Atlanta shows. Additionally, West videographer Nico Ballesteros will be filming the event, which will, like previous installments, be livestreamed on Apple Music.

It’s also worth pointing out, on a somewhat related note, this since making the announcement, West has removed all of the posts on his Instagram page.

As for when Donda will actually be released, that remains to be seen. The album was expected to be released after each listening event, but clearly, that hasn’t come to pass. This next event is on August 26, so at this point, one would assume the album currently has a planned August 27 release. Again, though, nothing is set in stone.

Over the past couple days, there have been rumors of a third listening event for Kanye West’s upcoming album Donda, as somebody who claimed to work security for Chicago’s Soldier Field claimed the venue had a “major concert event” scheduled for August 26. It turns out those rumors were actually true: Today, West himself confirmed on Instagram that a Donda event will indeed by happening at the Chicago stadium on the 26th. The show is set to being at 9 p.m. CT, with tickets going on sale on August 20 at noon CT.

This news comes less than 24 hours after West shared an image on Instagram, of what appears to be a dove seen through a teal-tinted window. It’s not clear if the image was meant to tease anything related to Donda.

The idea behind these listening events was that Donda would be made available on streaming services shortly after them, but based on the fact that we’re coming up on the third Donda event, this has yet to be the case. Apple Music currently lists the expected release date for Donda as August 27, the day after the event. At this point, though, given that West has missed so many announced or expected release dates for Donda, any information of that sort should be taken with a grain of salt.

So far, the best way to hear Kanye West’s album Donda is to attend one of his stadium listening parties for it, as the album hasn’t actually been released yet (despite what some billboards indicate). Well, another one of those is reportedly coming up, as rumors indicate, but instead of Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, he’s heading to Chicago.

As NME notes, somebody who claims to work on the security staff at the city’s Soldier Field (where the NFL’s Chicago Bears play their home games) indicated that a “major concert event” is taking place there on August 26. They believe the event in question is a Donda listening event, writing on Twitter, “I work for security at soldier field and we recently had an event added under ‘major concert event’ and I’m very confident that it’s for Kanye’s listening party. If it’s true, then Kanye will be performing in Chicago at soldier field on the 26th.” The tweet includes screenshots of what appears to be an app related to the person’s security work.

Additionally, minutes before that tweet, Fake Shore Drive‘s Andrew Barber also hinted at the Chicago event on Twitter.

Neither West nor anybody from his team have offered any public comment on the rumors, so it remains to be seen if the August 26 event is a real thing.

It’s still clear when Kanye West’s tenth album Donda will arrive. It was first announced last summer, and though Kanye played new music, presumably from it, during a July listening session in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, it still hasn’t been released. At this point, all fans can do is fantasize about what it is. That’s what one person, who unveiled a bizarre theory about Kanye’s tenth album, did.

The fan shared their thoughts on the project to a subreddit page under the title “[Theory] Kanye Wants To Make The First Official Unreleased Album.” The user believes Kanye’s “concept with donda is an album that has materialized itself into existence without being officially released.” They add that the songs on Donda will play on the radio, the album will be reviewed as the rapper “wants everyone to pretend and act like it’s out” — but no one will ever be able to buy it.

To conclude, they point to the mask Kanye has worn over the past month to promote Donda as well as the fact that the album currently has a completely black cover art to argue that the project is “an album you can’t see.” They added, “It doesn’t seem real. but the music exists. the experience exists. and it will be talked about for generations to come.”
Truthfully, this sounds similar to what releasing Donda as an NFT would feel like. But people will just have to keep waiting.

You can read the full theory above and check out what some fans had to say about it below.

https://twitter.com/ElliottBros1/status/1427649761906135041?s=20

The world continues to await the release of Kanye West’s Donda, although it remains unclear when the project will actually come out. In the meantime, fans are hunting for any sort of information on the album, of which there is not much. It looks like Apple Music have let some information slip, though.

Recently, the Apple Music description of the album was updated, as it now hints at a bevy of features on the album: “Yeezy’s 10th solo album features a wealth of the MC’s favorite voices.”

So far, the only confirmed track set to appear on the album is “Hurricane” featuring The Weeknd and Lil Baby. Other artists expected to appear on the album include Travis Scott, Baby Keem, Lil Yachty, Rooga, Gesaffelstein, Kid Cudi, Don Toliver, Playboi Carti, Fivio Foreign, Young Thug, Roddy Ricch, KayCyy, The Lox, and Jay Electronica.

Meanwhile, the Apple Music page indicates the album is set for release on August 20, although it remains to be seen if that’s speculation or if they got that date from a reliable source. That said, even West himself hasn’t proven to be a reliable source when it comes to release dates.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

This past Friday came and went without a peep from Kanye West regarding his new album Donda but he didn’t let that stop him from continuing to promote it as if it had come out as planned. Fans have reported and posted photos of massive billboards in such locations as Times Square in New York proclaiming that Donda is now streaming, even though a cursory glance at Kanye’s DSP profiles confirms that it is not.

The album, which was originally supposed to drop in 2020, was pushed back to January, then to the summer of 2021 when Kanye decided to have a massive listening event at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta ahead of its release. However, while the listening made a splash and its live stream broke Apple’s previous viewership records, the album never materialized and instead, Kanye announced a second listening event with a new release date. In the meantime, he was apparently holed up in a room in the bowels of the stadium while he worked to make last-minute tweaks — only to push the release back again after the second listening event.

That release date has since passed but it appears Kanye was at least serious enough about it to approve the billboards to go up, which is now having the opposite effect of making fans wonder if indeed the album is ever coming out. This could all be a ploy to build more buzz for it, but if so, that’s a very sharp two-sided blade for Kanye to wield, as similar strategies have backfired for predecessors like Dr. Dre, who promoted Detox for over a decade before finally pulling the plug and releasing Compton in 2015 instead.

Kanye apparently still plans to release Donda, but with each missed release date, it’s possible that fans’ enthusiasm — and patience — will get lower and lower until the album itself becomes an afterthought.

Someday, Kanye West may actually release Donda, the album for which he has already hosted two stadium-sized listening events. The album has already missed multiple expected release dates, including today, August 13. Information on that front isn’t really pouring out of West’s camp, but regardless, the album has a new projected release day: August 20.

Again, that’s not according to anybody on West’s team, but rather, the current Apple Music listing for the album. Furthermore, the page shows off a 24-song tracklist, but without any song titles, save for “Hurricane” featuring The Weeknd and Lil Baby. The listing indicates that users can listen to that song now, but it doesn’t appear to be available in the US (or the UK either, per NME). The tracklist also has star icons attached to Track 1, 2 (“Hurricane”), 8, 9, 12, 17, and 19.

Meanwhile, it seems like a good idea for West to keep hosting his Donda listening parties, at least from a financial perspective: It was reportedly recently that from the two listening events, West made a combined $7 million dollars just from merch sales. The second event also broke viewership records on Apple Music. As for West, it would seem he’s still holed up in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, despite rumors that he was relocating.

Two Kanye West listening events for his album Donda have come and gone with no album yet, but according to Billboard, perhaps the music wasn’t really the point of the events after all. Sources told Billboard that the official merchandise sales from the two events combined totaled $7 million — the same amount as the Yeezy x Gap down jacket Kanye dropped in the middle of the night on his birthday reportedly banked in that one night. Meanwhile, he’s likely set to double down — no pun intended — with a preorder link for the jacket he wore to the listening going live last week.

The listening event also broke Apple Music records for viewership, dragging in well over 5 million eyeballs, making it one of the most-watched livestream events within the past year. The album, which is tentatively set for release this Friday, was apparently recorded in the same venue in which Kanye held his listening events, as he had a room set up in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium where he slept, recorded, and streamed his activities leading up to the second listening event last week. That stream also featured a quick shot of Kanye in his underwear, prompting a minor frenzy among fans on Twitter.

The Donda era is already turning out to be both lucrative and expensive for Kanye, but will it pay off for fans as well? Hopefully, we’ll find out on Friday.

It’s been almost three weeks since Kanye West meant to — but didn’t — drop his tenth album, Donda. The rapper previously said the album, which he first announced last summer, would arrive on July 23, 2021, following a listening session at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. While the event went as planned, the album was not released — and still hasn’t been, even after a second listening event. Donda currently has a tentative release day of Friday, August 13, but fans will have to wait until that day to see if it actually drops. But it seems that the project has been a success, at least for him, even though he has yet to even release the album.

According to Billboard, West’s second listening event for Donda, which occurred on August 5, set a new livestream record on Apple Music, garnering 5.4 million viewers. That number is still short of the 6.1 million people that watched the 2020 Primetime Emmys last September, which makes the second Donda listening session one of the most-watched livestream events within the past year. The second livestream also amassed some $7 million in revenue thanks to in-person purchases made at the stadium.

In the meantime, it’s been reported that “Hurricane,” a track from Donda with The Weeknd and Lil Baby, could arrive as the first single for the album.