Kanye West's 'Donda' was on Apple Music, until it wasn't

Kanye West's record album apparently released the long-awaited album "Donda" prematurely, with Apple Music subscribers able to listen to tracks from the album for a few hours before it got pulled.

Quietly surfacing on Sunday morning, Kanye West's "Donda" album is now playable on Apple Music. Appearing with a monotone black album cover, the album is West's tenth studio album, released through West's GOOD Music label and Def Jam Records.

Lasting 1 hour and 49 minutes, the album is spread across 27 tracks, offered as Lossless and as an Apple Digital Master. The tracklist starts with a 52-second "Donda Chant" before the first full track plays, titled "Jail."

The album's release has repeatedly slipped, starting from July 23 to August 6, before speculation on August 13 said a launch would happen on August 22.

West's promotion for the album has been unusual, consisting of multiple streaming listening parties in July and August. The listening parties, held in stadiums and attracting thousands of people, were simultaneously streamed on Apple Music, leading to West shattering other Apple Music event records.

It seems that the decision to release the album was made for Kanye by the record label, rather than by the artist himself.

According to an Instagram post by West on Sunday, as reported by Variety, Def Jam parent company UMG released the album without West's approval. West also claims the initial unavailability of the track "Jail 2" was due to UMG blocking it.

"Jail" and counterpart "Jail 2" are controversial due to featuring Marylin Manson and DaBaby, with the former accused of sexual assault and the latter making homophobic comments. Both artists appeared at West's fourth listening event on Thursday.

Some East coast US AppleInsider staffers are unable to listen to the album as of 5PM ET Sunday, though not all are affected. International staffers had availability throughout Sunday.

Updated at 5PM ET on August 29 to reflect the progressive withdrawal of the album.

8 Comments

cpsro 3239 comments · 14 Years

About 3 years ago

hung up on himself

thinkman100000000 87 comments · 3 Years

New release date: the 10th of NEVER………if there's a God in heaven.

JanNL 328 comments · 9 Years

thinkman100000000 said:

New release date: the 10th of NEVER………if there's a God in heaven.

Better… what a disaster is thuis guy.

beadlien 18 comments · 19 Years

I literally couldn’t care less.

bmatthews 6 comments · 6 Years

beadlien said:

I literally couldn’t care less.

Ostensibly, you could care a bit less so as not even to bother commenting on how little you care.

Personally, I find this whole thing fascinating from a PR and implementation perspective. I can't say as I'm a fan of Yeezy myself, but I'm super curious as to how much of this is staged buzz and how much of it is organic, ie. is a delay really a delay when there are organized events to drip feed more hype. It's like meta-hype--press coverage about the press coverage. Makes for a great media studies case study.

I do find the structure of this article kind of confusing though. The headline makes it sound as the the album is no longer available, the article itself clarifies that it's only impacting a small number of people.