Much like every one of Kanye West‘s listening parties for his GRAMMY-nominated tribute to his late-mother Donda, Ye left fans in both awe and disbelief at Donda 2’s Miami experience Tuesday night (Feb. 22).
As opposed to streaming the performance on Apple Music or Prime Video — much like he did with Drake for their “Free Larry Hoover Show” — Ye righteously burned bridges that led him to broadcasting his cinematic performance of his upcoming album on stemplayer.com.
Shooing Amazon Music’s Twitch account, Apple Music and YouTube, Ye live streaming his own event (on his own website) is just another “icon” level moment for the Chicago “jeen-yuhs.” While Ye continues defy industry norms, it goes without saying that Donda 2 is not only a continuation of its predecessor, but another grandiose piece of art from the mind of Kanye West. Only available on Stem Player, the album’s 16-track Miami version is now downloadable on stemplayer.com.
After the hours-long heartbeat that ushered fans into the performance, Ye came in hot and heavy, picking up right where he left off in Chicago with his childhood home engulfed in flames on set.
The first song played was “True Love” — a wildly exciting unreleased collaboration with XXXTENTACION, who received two posthumous placements during the show, appearing later on for the song “Selfish.”
Donda 2‘s sound feels like an amalgamation of many previous versions of Ye. Shades of 808s & Heartbreaks, Yeezus and Donda all find their way on the record, as well as some evolved vocal maneuvers and forward-thinking production — Kanye’s bread and butter.
Other features on the project include Future thrice, as he is the executive producer of the project, as well as some dynamic performances by Baby Keem and Migos on “Kid We Did It,” Jack Harlow (recently flown out to Miami after Ye’s love for “Nail Tech“) on “Louis Bags,” Soulja Boy on “First Time In A Long Time,” Vory on “Lift Me Up,” Travis Scott with some vocal inflections on “Pablo” with Future and Don Toliver on “Broken Road.”
Along with its stellar feature roster, Ye included an entertaining handful of audio recording samples as skits, such estranged ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s speech about how great of a person and father Ye is, or Kamala Harris’ now-memed “we did it Joe” phone call to Joe Biden. It even featured a fiery scene from Empire that went viral on TikTok.
After playing most of Donda 2, Ye battled through botched sound and technical difficulties to end the show with a few Donda favorites. His replica home engulfed in water split in half, transitioning to Sunday Service, DaBaby and Marilyn Manson’s performance of “Jail, Pt.2” as well as Playboi Carti and Fivio Foreign’s “Off The Grid.”
West also made time for some of his latest collaborative singles, welcoming The Game to join him for “EAZY” and Alicia Keys and Fivio again for “CIty of Gods.”
While there’s no telling when Ye will release the official version of D2, what fans heard of the new album sounds angsty, fiery, futuristic (literally and figuratively) and flat-out iconic.
Stay tuned with OGM for more updates on Donda 2.
