The third and final event, held a few weeks later, was the grandest of the three productions, with a replica of the artist’s childhood home built inside the venue. The version he played at the next listening event had grown substantially. When the first scheduled release date passed, Kanye began living inside the stadium, and set up a live stream from the room where he claimed to be finishing the record. At the first event, in July, he débuted a rough version of the album, including a verse Jay-Z had recorded that same day. #Ye off the grid lyrics seriesIn the weeks leading up to the release, the artist held a series of stadium gatherings-two at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, in Atlanta, and a third at Soldier Field, in Chicago. He premièred his 2018 album, “ Ye,” to a small crowd of celebrities and music writers near Jackson Hole, and held a series of similar events in other cities as part of “ Project Wyoming.” He started his weekly “Sunday Service” events, performing gospel versions of secular songs with his choir, in 2019, and that same year he took that choir inside James Turrell’s Roden Crater for the “Jesus Is King” movie, a visual companion to “ Jesus Is King,” the 2019 album that documented his religious awakening.įor this latest album, the listening events were a vehicle for Kanye’s notorious perfectionism, one-upmanship, and procrastination. Eventually, débuting the music directly to small crowds of devout believers became key to his process. In recent years, he has come to resemble a megachurch televangelist, on account of his reactionary politics, his public scandals, and the way he uses congregation as an excuse for exclusion and self-promotion. Neither God nor Kanye’s mom provides a sense of direction here.Īt various intervals throughout his career, Kanye has tried (and, for the most part, failed) to reconcile the secular and the sanctified. The song’s blend of platoon-march chants and gospel choir seemed to activate the lyrics, which described why he was willing to risk throwing his rap career away to simply say that he’d been saved.“Donda,” by contrast, is music without an animating principle, divine or otherwise: the album lacks both the uplifting spirit of gospel and the worldly soul of rap. “I ain’t here to argue about His facial features / Or here to convert atheists into believers,” he rapped on the 2004 track. The sense of purpose that powered “Jesus Walks”-one with a panoramic view of theology that included empathy for the souls of strippers, hustlers, drug dealers, and killers-is missing. Kanye does not abide by his mother’s philosophy on his tenth solo studio album, “Donda,” a Christian-rap album that is pitifully short on meaningful gestures of conviction or convincing expressions of what it feels like to be in His embrace. To Donda West, the hit wasn’t just the manifestation of a blessing but a symbol of his work ethic and vision: “To tell someone they must believe in God is not nearly as effective as believing in God yourself and having them see what results from your faith.” “This was everything Kanye had worked for finally coming together,” she wrote. She wrote of Kanye as divinely favored and “Jesus Walks,” his unlikely 2004 single, as a song with a purpose. In her 2007 book, “ Raising Kanye,” the late Donda West devoted an entire chapter to the song “Jesus Walks” and the story of how her son inherited his Christianity.
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