Kanye West’s name has recently been in the limelight of pop culture news ever since model Kim Kardashian publicly filed for a divorce from him. The way Ye has coped with this breakup has been controversial, to say the least. From posting on social media about Kim’s new boyfriend Pete Davidson on Instagram to refusing to sign the divorce papers, many people are questioning Kanye’s decisions. From this emerged his latest album: Donda 2. The album can only be exclusively listened to on the streaming platform Stem Player with an initial payment of $214.50 dollars. With this in mind, is it truly worth paying over two hundred dollars for an album released by such a contentious artist at the moment? How does it live up to the original Donda album?
“I was able to listen to it early before everyone else because a lot of the songs got leaked on SoundCloud,” said senior Max Parr ‘22. “To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much with the whole Kim-Kanye taking a toll on him, but like the album was kind of average. The features were probably the best part with Soulja Boy and Travis Scott, and I think Kanye showed a different side to himself with this album.”
Parr ‘22 also noted that “artists usually put out their best stuff either during or after a breakup so this is just evidence to support or contradict that. Kind of like what we saw with The Weeknd in the albums he put out during his breakup, it always seems like these artists become ten times better when their girlfriends leave them.” This album seems to contradict this trend.
Unfortunately, this album turned out to be arguably one of the worst Kanye has ever released. With such a wide variety of features with different melodies and flows, the album feels like a ton of puzzle pieces that don’t go together. From songs with XXXTentacion and Future to Sean Leon, the album had several different styles, but they just didn’t seem to fit together. Features such as Travis Scott and Soulja Boy definitely stood out among the rest of the 16 tracks that were released.
One aspect that Kanye’s audience did not receive well was the fact that the album is exclusive to the Stem Player, a tiny portable device that streams and plays music. The Stem Player requires a $200 dollar fee. Usually, artists will release their music to multiple or all streaming platforms like SoundCloud, Spotify, and Apple Music.
Explaining why he decided to release music on his own device instead of streaming services, Kanye wrote on Instagram, “Donda 2 will only be available on my own platform, the Stem Player. Not on Apple Amazon Spotify or YouTube. Today artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes, it’s time to free music from this oppressive system. It’s time to take control and build our own. You can download new music from stemplayer.com. You can play 4 different elements of the track: vocals, drums, bass, and music. It also has an MP3 player available. We currently have 67,000 available and are making 3,000 a day.”
Kanye’s ‘new’ approach with Donda 2 was an unsuccessful attempt at trying to improve the already well-established Donda album. While Ye tried to incorporate new flows with Soulja Boy and other features, it still does not compare to the original album. It is also questionable whether it is worth it to spend over $200 dollars to listen to such an album.
