im not even gonna check

DONDA

LMAOO

Hey people I want to tell yall that I think this comment will probably go nowhere, and maybe even get downvoted to hades, but this is my honest, thought-out reaction to what we heard tonight. Context: I'm 24 and a pretty empathetic but also a***ytical person. I have listened to Kanye for years, I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, and I understand Kanye's thoughts and ideas and personality very, very well. Not speaking arrogantly here, but honestly. His amazing gifts and intelligence, his mindset, his empathy, his off-the-charts creativity, his ego, his flawed methods of communication, I understand it all. And I love him dearly, no lie. Like I truly, truly love the man. I'll add that I occasionally have had extremely vivid dreams in the last 2 years, in which I speak with Kanye West. In them, he is usually in apparent emotional pain (I have dreams where I see other people I know and I speak with them, and the conversations turn out later to be true. God is real and shows me things. Most won't understand this and many will write me off for saying this alone, I expect that)

I sense a very, very confused and heartbroken Kanye right now. I think that this entire album is an expression of that and this actually breaks my heart in a way. I sense a lot of shame in Kanye, as well as confusion, sadness, guilt, and even a bit of self-destructive pride. But sadness and confusion are the biggest feelings I sense in him. Lines like "This is the new me" (not verbatim, that's what I remember) on an album that is enormously sad in nature, seems like evidence of a man having a true, serious emotional crisis. He mourns his family, saying "I lost my family" (not verbatim), which is so extremely depressing for him, and was for me just listening to it.

Going off of that, I think this whole album is also an expression of a person in identity crisis. The album uses a lot of trap instrumentation, which in general seems like a real short-changing of Ye of his real talent and creativity. Trap Ye seems cheap to me, and I think trap in general has a lot of poor, low-effort lyricism that is highly over-esteemed in our music's culture now. I hear lots of low-effort trap themes in this album. These seem like desperate attempts to make the music appealing to the wider audience now- "the culture", which seems to love crappy trap rappers (ie. Lil Baby, a totally lame lyricist who people under 20 seem to adore). To me, it's a terrible shame that Kanye has fallen under this desire to emulate trap sounds to reach a mainstream audience. A terrible shame.

I also think it's a shame that Kanye scrambled to get features from trap artists whose music has and never, ever has been as inspired or authentic as his has been.

The album has a lot of pretty melodic sounds. It's mildly interesting, and really freaking heartbreaking at times. But, the heartbreak is not just in the lyrics...it's in the very nature of the music itself. The mumbling, the half-assed actual verses. The album I heard tonight seems like an attempt to express his heartbreak, while also not being able to truly talk about how heartbroken he is. That could be because he feels the culture won't understand, or b/c he wants to "keep it g" or "straight", that kinda thing, or maybe he is just so confused and ashamed over feeling like a failure on account of his divorce (b/c I think he does actually probably feel that way), that he can't put together in words, at least not publicly including not in his music, just how lost and confused and sad he feels.

As a Christian who hears and feels the Holy Spirit, I felt the Holy Spirit in some of this music. I know Kanye knows God, and I know he has felt the Holy Spirit. I hear it in some of these songs.

But, the entire project that we heard tonight is overall very scattered. The lyrics expressed some real emotions, but the way Ye uses his voice and his expresses his thoughts was mostly flat and unengaging and uninspiring...like to an extreme degree. The presentation tonight was also underwhelming, and he seemed like a confused, pained young man just playing around knowing people are watching him. Sounds harsh but that's the vibe I got. Even the way he looked at the crowd at the end, awaiting applause, then walked off stage...Seems like he was on a different page than everyone else. I just felt a massively confused vibe from watching his body language and his whole presentation and from the music itself.

I appreciate the mourning of the loss of his family cohesion. That's the real strong "positive" for me here. The mourning is so strong in some of these songs.

And to help illustrate my point about him and his emotional state now...Why the mask? People have discussed this for months. I think the simple and yet so real and heartbreaking reasons is that we're seeing a man who is heartbroken. Just plain confused and heartbroken. I know I've said that like 10 times here, but I sense it so strongly from him and have suspected it for a while now, and dreamt about it like I said. Whatevs. Call me crazy, downvote me if you want. But I know what I'm sensing here and my senses have led me right about other people many times, when it comes to sensing people's thoughts and feelings. So I know what I'm saying about him right now is probably the truth.

Just some thoughts off the cuff.

Albums out on Napster

midnight

i cant believe people were praying this to drop and now theyre begging that this doesnt drop LOOOOOOL

Ye is just too successful to change his ways man He needs an album to debut at no.2 or something just so he gets the message

WE EATING

its so funny seeing people griping about the lack of drums knowing thats what they did after blond came out

Thank god there wasn’t a rant to make everybody hate ye before he dropped his album this era lol

hahahahahhaahahahahahaha everyone jaded af

Missed the livestream, how christian was the album?

shambles

still waiting on that 10 minute long outro to I am a god that Rick cut

i’m gonna state this again cuz it’s so baffling to me

kanye played almost two entirely different albums at the listening parties

what in the world and why

it didn't drop

its on spotify. HOLY S*** 645AR FEATURE