Donda & The Art of Evolving Albums (Article)
Back when Kanye West first updated his then-recently released The Life Of Pablo album, I jokingly referred to it as “album DLC”. In the digital age, many modern video games receive additional downloadable content or even patches to fix bugs, glitches or any other tweaks to the overall experience. What Kanye did in 2016 was apply this to music, taking full advantage of streaming services (another way 2016 was a cultural reset, but I digress). Moreso than any other artist that’s not married to his big brother, Yeezy has mastered making albums that feel like full-on events.
As early as his second album, Kanye began to make more of a spectacle out of his projects. Late Registration is often summed up as “College Dropout but with an orchestra”. But it’s not just ANY orchestra. Kanye tapped in with famed film composer (among other things) Jon Brion to really bring his vision to life. This brought the humble beginnings of his debut effort to a much bigger stage. I mean that very literally, as Kanye even went on to release a live orchestrated version of the album entitled Late Orchestration. Next was Graduation, a spectacle of an album itself. But beyond the stadium rock synths and bright lights that accompanied the music in videos, he set the stage to go head to head with what many would claim was the most commercially successful rapper in the world at the time. He specifically moved the release date of his third album to coincide with 50 Cent’s third album - 2007’s Curtis - to see who would sell more records (I myself made $5 that fateful day by betting on Ye). Then to make things even bigger, he embarked on the Glow In The Dark Tour. 808’s & Heartbreak shifted the culture sonically with its use of auto-tune. He did a Vh1 Storytellers episode, bringing humanity to the cold electronic sounding project. When My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy season rolled around, he gained steam first with the G.O.O.D. Fridays series. He debuted “Runaway” with a jaw-dropping performance at his return to the VMA’s. He released a short film. He brought G.O.O.D. Music to cyphers at the BET Awards & radio stations in a suit.
“An artist is making public appearances and performances as part of promoting his album. Duh, that’s what they’re supposed to do.” - You in your head to yourself (2021).
This is where the magic of creativity comes in and separates true artists like Kanye West from the rest of the crowd. Kanye very carefully made aesthetic choices to expand upon or at least match the tone of each album whenever he appeared in public around the time of a release. All of these moments in hindsight are a part of that chapter of Kanye’s career to the point where we subconsciously tie them into the album itself. Experiencing MBDTF was so much more than just listening to the album. It’s a real rabbit hole to get sucked into whenever I reminisce upon that era of Ye. Then he continued to a lesser extent with the Watch The Throne tour. Yeezus came. Our first taste of the record was projected onto the sides of real life buildings. Finally, this brings us back to Pablo and the legendary Yeezy SZN 3 fashion show. Yeah, you read that right. For as much as we reflect on this night as the debut of Mr. West’s seventh studio album, it was really just Kanye playing friends like Kid Cudi & Pusha T some music he had been working on while promoting his new clothing drop. At one point he even simply passed the aux cord to Young Thug like it was just a ride to McDonald’s. It just so happened that the rest of the world got to see this as well, whether via streams or at one of the select movie theatres it was broadcast in. It really made an event out of the album.
The album released to critical acclaim. But ever the perfectionist, Kanye famously tweeted three somewhat cryptic words. “Ima fix wolves”. Since music was now primarily consumed via streaming services, he didn’t have to worry about the world buying a physical CD and that music living in its initial state forever. So he went on to continuously update the album for the next four months. Deluxe editions of albums with small tweaks such as remasters, remixes, or even bonus tracks are nothing new. But Kanye was doing all of this plus changing the order of tracks, adding features, and even making changes to the production of certain tracks like adding a choir to “Father, Stretch My Hands Pt. 1”. And he was able to do this simply by swapping out files on the streaming platforms we were all now using to access to album. As someone who pretty much deems himself the poster child for artistic integrity and creativity at large, I’m sure Kanye noticed that he now lived in a world where he could capitalize off of his entire creative process in real time. He even said as much when he tweeted “Life Of Pablo is a living breathing changing creative expression. #contemporaryart”.
This is exactly what he’s doing with these Donda listening party’s. At this point the release dates are simply scapegoats to keep us interested and could change at any time to better fit Kanye’s vision. This was evidenced as he literally called Mike Dean about mix issues while premiering Donda at Mercedes-Benz Stadium (for the second time). When and if Kanye says it’s done, it’ll come out, and even then he might change it. But he knows that by adding new guest features, changing songs altogether, it’ll keep us glued to the event he’s made out of this album the way we glue our eyes to reality television shows, just to see what happens next. To a slightly lesser extent, the industry at large was taken notice. Young Thug added a Machine Gun Kelly feature to “Ecstasy” shortly after So Much Fun came to streaming services. He then dropped a traditional deluxe with additional tracks, which replaced the original on Young Thug’s Apple Music page. Lil Uzi Vert even kicked off a deluxe album trend by attaching an entirely separate project to Eternal Atake as a deluxe edition less than a month after its initial release.
In this streaming era where new music is coming out all the time, and is accessible on the same devices we use to access social media, browse the internet, watch movies and more, the end goal is all the same. It is to keep your attention on the artist’s music for a longer period of time. Artists are now competing for Netflix for your attention, so they drop a new season to their music career in the form of deluxe albums. As an independent artist myself, I often hear about the pitfalls of artists who fail to promote their projects even a month after their release. While I don’t think Kanye at this point in his career will ever have to worry about that, he’s basically giving us tastes of the full album as it is rather than singles leading up to it or bonus tracks on a deluxe following it. After years of rumored Kanye West albums, at least we’re getting a full event showing us the music. I’m still holding out hope for the TLOP follow-up TurboGrafx-16.
