After it was reported that Kanye West’s upcoming Donda listening event at Chicago’s Soldier Field stadium would not require proof of COVID-19 vaccinations or proof of a negative COVID test, representatives for the stadium told TMZ that Soldier Field will do on-site vaccinations the day of the event. ASM Global Management, which runs Solider Field, partnered with the city of Chicago to secure 1,500 doses of vaccines split between the two-shot Pfizer version and the one-shot Johnson & Johnson formula. For anyone getting the Pfizer dose, Department of Health officials will help set up a second appointment.
A similar program at the Atlanta Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where Kanye held the first two listening events, reportedly only yielded a small number of vaccinations, but with the Delta variant spreading, perhaps Chicagoans will be more eager to inoculate themselves. Other safety measures will include a reduced capacity — only 38,000 will be allowed into the 63,000-capacity venue.
Fans have been led to expect a more elaborate production than those who attended the Atlanta show as well, as Kanye is apparently pulling out several of the stops to ensure his hometown event has much more to see — including a replica of his childhood home that was reportedly being built on the stadium field. Hopefully, with this third event, he’ll be more satisfied with the version of the album he’s putting forth because any more delays may end up costing him more than just stadium rental fees.
In 2018, Kanye West’s perpetual tardiness became kind of a joke after his GOOD Music releases came later and later. In 2021, no one is laughing — or even surprised, really — that West has now had two separate listening events for his new album Donda while the album itself has been pushed back over and over again. Originally, its release date was scheduled for sometime in 2020, but for obvious reasons, it was pushed back to early this year.
But then, it was pushed back again — and again. Kanye now has a third listening event booked for this Thursday but there doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as much buzz as there was for the first or even the second. This is after neither listening event drew the sort of response that Kanye was able to generate in 2016 with the rollout for The Life Of Pablo. Maybe his antics just don’t resonate anymore or maybe he’s finally burned through all of the goodwill he generated with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and his 2010 GOOD Fridays campaign, but it feels like excitement dies down with each new release date he announces.
The diminishing returns for each new announcement remind me of another much-hyped hip-hop release that never came to fruition: Dr. Dre’s long-rumored, but as-yet unsubstantiated masterpiece, Detox. Referred to throughout the years as “rap’s Chinese Democracy, Detox held near-mythical status among hip-hop heads for over a decade following its announcement shortly after the release of 2001, Dre’s anachronously-titled sophomore “solo” album — which itself dropped nearly 10 years after his debut, The Chronic.
Billed as Dre’s final album and tentatively scheduled for release in 2004, Detox not only never materialized, but it also frustrated rap fans endlessly with every tantalizing detail hinted at by one of its seemingly endless list of collaborators. Names attached to the project included 50 Cent, Anderson .Paak, Busta Rhymes, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, and even Golden Era pioneer Rakim. On Dre’s collaborations with proteges like 50 and Kendrick, he continued to tease fans to “Look Out For Detox.” Interviews and features described the high-concept theme of an epic crime thriller, Dre’s ultimate goodbye to the rap game.
And yet, with each successive year, the reality of Detox seemed further and further away. Where once artists’ hints that they had been in the studio prompted excitement from hip-hop fans, by the mid-2010s, such tidbits only inspired derisive dismissal. By then, everyone had been in the studio with Dre. If he were to release even a fraction of the collaborations that were rumored to be sitting on some hard drive somewhere, it could only spark waves of lamentations that the other rumored records hadn’t dropped as well, or that the buzzy alliances would only result in music that fell short of expectations.
Single releases like 2011’s “I Need A Doctor” felt like forward movement, only for Dre to again go dormant by the end of that year. Four more years went by before Dre released a full project and it wasn’t even Detox. 2015’s well-received but short-lived Compton seemed to put paid to the concept of the swan song, which was possibly Dr. Dre’s only way out of the prison of expectations he’d built around himself. By moving on from Detox, he freed himself from the constraints of releasing an all-time, game-changing classic and let fans engage with the music itself instead of their disappointment at missing pieces.
While Donda hasn’t quite reached that level of hype just yet, there are some pretty obvious parallels. His extensive list of potential collaborators on the project includes everyone from newcomer Baby Keem to classic New York battle rappers The LOX to the slippery trap rap royal Young Thug. So far, two entirely different versions of the album have been played for fans, including one with a Jay-Z reunion record, and yet, the quality of the music has been washed out by the spectacle of the events themselves, with snack menus going more viral than any of the songs and news coverage of the third event focusing heavily on what appears to be the publicity stunt of Kanye building a house inside Soldier Field stadium.
Meanwhile, should another projected release date pass by without a listenable version of the album hitting streaming services, it’s a safe bet that whatever goodwill Kanye has left will be spent in its entirety. Sure, there’s a subset of Yeezy diehards on Reddit who have convinced themselves that what he’s doing is the next big idea in album rollouts, but the rest of us will probably finally admit to ourselves that the emperor has been parading about in his underwear for the last few years. Maybe the constant delays really are a sign of his perfectionism, just like Dr. Dre’s were for Detox — but in the end, unless they actually release the products they’re pushing, it won’t matter how good they are, if they only exist in the artists’ imaginations.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the rapper will not require proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID test at his upcoming Donda listening party, taking place at Soldier Field on Thursday, August 26. Consequence points out that Soldier Field doesn’t have a roof or dome, which technically qualifies it as an outdoor concert, which means that it wouldn’t fall under Chicago’s indoor mask mandate. Still, there will be an audience cap: only 38,000 people will be permitted in the stadium, which has a max capacity of around 63,000.
“Kanye West’s performance is one of many examples that show that Chicago can be open and safe at the same time,” Chicago Park District spokesperson Michele Lemons said. “We have worked with Soldier Field on COVID-19 safety protocols, as we have other venues including Wrigley and Guaranteed Rate Fields, and feel this event can be safely held with the proper mitigation efforts in place.”
As for when Donda will actually be released, that still remains to be seen. The album was expected to be released after each listening event, but that has obviously not happened. This next event is on August 26, so at this point, one would assume the album currently has a planned August 27 release. But you know what they say about assuming: it makes an ass out of you and Ye.
Kanye West may have delayed his anticipated album Donda, but he’s getting his fans involved in the album more than ever. He’s been hosting a few Donda listening events, which give select fans a way to hear the album before its released. The rapper is also giving his listeners a way to interact with his music on a more personal level by releasing a stem player, which will give fans an easy way to remix his music.
Kanye unveiled his Donda stem player on his website Wednesday. According to the product description, the stem player ships with the purchase of Donda and will allow listeners to “customize any song.” It includes features that control vocals, drums, bass, and samples, it can isolate certain parts of a song, and add effects. Staying true to its name, the device can even split a song into stems, which is an individual audio file for each instrument used on a track.
Kanye previously mentioned his stem player in a 2019 interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. It seemed as though the rapper’s original plan was to release the stem player alongside his Jesus Is King album in order to “spread the gospel.” But the device was delayed nearly a year and a half, and will instead be released alongside Donda.
After things were quiet between the two rappers for several months, the beef betweern Drake and Kanye West’s seemed to flare back up over the weekend. It began with the former apparently dissing Kanye on a guest verse on Trippie Redd’s “Betrayal.” “All these fools I’m beefin’ that I barely know / Forty-five, forty-four (Burned out), let it go,” he raps. citing Kanye’s current age. “Ye ain’t changin’ sh*t for me, it’s set in stone / Rollin’ stones, heavy stones (PinkGrillz) / Precious stone, let me make my presence known.” Just a day later, Kanye posted and quickly deleted the address to Drake’s Toronto mansion, which for the record was already public information.
While we wait for the next event in the duo’s longstanding beef, Rick Ross — who has worked with both rappers on multiple occasions — chimed in with his own comments on the back and forth. When asked about the beef during a recent interview on SiriusXM Urban View’s Mike Muse Show, Ross replied, “I love it.” He then shared a portion of a conversation he recently had with Drake.
“He said, ‘Everything is unfolding. I’m about to be as free as a bird,’” Ross recalled. “And he put the caption with the owl. And I just, I couldn’t do nothing but put ‘hahahaha’ because to me, I understand the genius to both of these artists, and I understand this is nothing personal to them. This is two levels of creativity inspiring each other.”
Ross added, “Because they both are right now thinking of the artwork, thinking of the credits, where do we place, what color is this, and to me, it only makes the game that much more genius, that much more valuable.”
Ross also commented on Kanye’s social media antics. “Kanye posted Drake’s address on the Instagram, but who didn’t have Drake address already?” he said. “It’s the only 100 million dollar estate in Canada. So if you don’t understand what’s going on, you would’ve thought that was personal. It really wasn’t. That’s just them getting ready for as Drake said everything unfolding.”
Grammy-winning rapper Kanye West doesn’t want to be the old Kanye anymore. The hip-hop star has taken legal action to go from the artist formerly known as Kanye West to simply, Ye. Kanye West’s Taking Legal Action To Change His Name According to reports, Mr. West is going the serious route for having a fresh […]
When Kanye is on a roll, there is very little anyone or anything can do to stop him, not even something silly like a birth certificate. In between tweaking his still-not-yet-released album, Donda, and reportedly rebuilding his childhood home inside Soldier Field stadium for the album’s Chicago listening event, he is also working on a legal name change. Though Kanye Omari West certainly has a nice ring to it, TMZ reports that Yeezy now wants to be officially known simply as “Ye.”
Kanye filed the documents for the name change in California, where changes are generally unanimously approved unless they seem designed to enable or commit fraud. That doesn’t seem to be the case here, so likely the transition will go through. Even though plenty of past lyrics double down on the “Mr. West” moniker, that will be a thing of Kanye’s past after this… just like his marriage to Mrs. Kardashian West. Yeah, Kim is still using her married name even though it might not be Kanye’s own legal last name very much longer. Perhaps that’s part of the motivation for the shift? Either way, get used to referring to the artist-formerly-known-as-Kanye as the even simpler Ye. Since it’s been his nickname for years it won’t be too jarring, but if he starts switching back and forth like Puff Daddy/P. Diddy/Love, things could get tricky.
West Coast rap star Roddy Ricch might have just delivered the biggest confirmation new music is dropping courtesy of rap heavyweight Kanye West. The elusive hip-hop hitmaker has shared new pics of himself chilling alongside the G.O.O.D Music boss. Roddy Ricch + Kanye West Are Coming Roddy went to his Instagram page with his only […]
Hip-hop star Kanye West is bringing something major to Chicago. In light of an upcoming third performance on his unofficial DONDA pre-album tour, a construction project has fans shook. Kanye West Is Rebuilding His Childhood Home ‘Ye is building (technically reconstructing) his childhood home that he grew up in on the south side of Chicago […]
