In honor of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary year, we’re looking back at the top artists, songs, albums, and producers of “The Genius Era,” 2009 to the present.
The primary focus on most gospel albums is God, obviously. You’ll often mistake a Christian rap or rock tune for a secular love song until you realize “he” and “him” are actually “He” and “Him.” The idea with praise music is to humble yourself before the Almighty, the apparent giver of the creative gifts you’re exhibiting.
This is not always the case on Kanye West’s Donda, the deluxe version of which is the top hip-hop album of 2021 on Genius according to pageviews. To the extent that it’s a gospel album—and that’s very much open to debate, despite the LP’s status as Billboard’s top gospel album of 2021—it’s one that pushes the genre in new and perhaps uncomfortable directions.
Comprising 32 tracks and a clear-your-schedule runtime of two hours and 11 minutes, Donda (Deluxe) presents the messy, self-involved gospel of a major celebrity arriving at a personal and professional crossroads. In the nearly two years it took him to make Donda, Kanye split from his wife, ran unsuccessfully for president, and sparred openly with his record label. The album was originally slated to drop in July 2020—more than a year before it finally did—and as he continued pushing back the release date and openly tinkering with the project via bonkers soft-launch listening parties held in football stadiums, Ye dared the public to decide whether his music was still strong enough to justify all the chaos.
Most critics will agree that Donda is not up to the level of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy or even The Life of Pablo, but it remains a fascinating document—both lyrically and musically—of where Kanye’s head was during the lost years of the pandemic. Named for West’s late mother, who died in 2007, Donda was the follow-up to 2019’s Jesus Is King, Kanye’s first so-called gospel album. Awash in organs and synths and sometimes completely devoid of drums, Donda is notably free of curse words, though that’s mostly due to audio editing, not squeaky-cleaning songwriting on the part of West or his many collaborators. Which makes sense: Donda isn’t an album about living perfectly—it’s about admitting you’re a wreck and praying you’ll find a way forward.
After the opening “Donda Chant,” which features singer Syleena Johnson repeating the word “Donda” more than 50 times, like some sort of mantra, West makes his entrance on “Jail,” featuring a highly engaged JAY-Z. (That’s on the standard edition—for reasons known only to Kanye, “Jail” is relegated to track six on the deluxe version.) Here, over swirling electric guitars, West runs afoul of the authorities but reminds us that he’s not the only sinner in the house.
I’ll be honest, we all liars
I’ll be honest, we all liars
I’m pulled over and I got priors
Guess we goin’ down, guess who’s goin’ to jail?
It’s a point well taken. Presumably, what Ye likes most about his newly amplified Christianity is the promise of forgiveness and redemption. The part he struggles with is humility. Witness the spooky trap bumper “Off the Grid,” where he wrestles openly with his messianic impulses.
I got this God power, that’s my leverages
I got this Holy Water, that’s my beverages
I gotta help myself out of selfishness
I just bought a floor out of Selfridges
I gotta make sure they know who they messin’ with
I gotta tell ’em “sorry,” they too delicate
I gotta stay with God where the blessings is
In the next lines, he calls God his “bestie” and affirms that he’s not preaching “for the hell of it.” But whose glory is he seeking? He positions himself as something of a prophet over the creeping stomp-clap of “Heaven and Hell.”
Know the Lord my bulletproof vest (Is on Earth)
When we survive, know that we blessed
Save my people through the music
On “Remote Control,” West likens God to a corporate bigwig, a symbol of power the billionaire musician and entrepreneur can understand.
He got it on remote control, like a CEO
Feelin’ like the man, feelin’ like the man
I was in my hovercraft, floatin’ down the path
God just grabbed my hand, had a bigger plan
Kanye can sound convincingly like a man in desperate need of salvation, however. On “24,” an organ-led fuzzy blanket of a song featuring the Sunday Service Choir, West alludes to fans’ hunger for the “old Kanye,” as referenced on the Life of Pablo track “I Love Kanye.” He’s not trying to be any version of himself that existed prior to his newfound commitment to God.
New me over the old me
Let it out, let it all out
God, please set it alright
Make it right, now that feels right
Nothing else ever feels right
Nothing else ever feels right
You can’t mention Donda without taking a deep breath and talking about all of the features on the album. West welcomes rap veterans like JAY-Z and The LOX; relative newcomers like Lil Baby and Fivio Foreign; underground drug-rap heroes Westside Gunn and Conway the Machine; and fellow A-listers like Travis Scott and The Weeknd. In a bid to generate controversy and/or make some type of commentary on cancel culture, Ye also enlists DaBaby, who’d recently tanked his career by making homophobic remarks at Rolling Loud in Miami, and Marilyn Manson, who was facing multiple sexual assault charges.
DaBaby and Manson are on “Jail 2,” which wasn’t available when Donda first landed on August 29. After the album dropped sans “Jail 2,” Kanye accused the label of releasing the album without his permission. It was one of many Donda subplots, and it was resolved when “Jail 2” became available later in the day.
The presence of Manson and DaBaby contribute to the general noise that threatens to undermine the message of Donda, such that one exists. But just as he’s an imperfect person, Kanye is an imperfect artist. And on some level, his creative fallibility this time around makes him appear more vulnerable. Listening to the uneven sprawl of Donda, you almost end up rooting for the guy—something not a lot of people have been able to do since.
