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      Drake's 'Certified Lover Boy' Arrives, as Chart Battle With Kanye West Continues

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      The rappers’ anticipated albums, “Certified Lover Boy” and “Donda” — both potential streaming blockbusters — arrived within five days of each other, with very different rollouts.For more than a decade, Drake and Kanye West have been locked in a dialogue at the top of the hip-hop heap — occasional collaborators turned friendly competitors turned bitter rivals, and sometimes all three at once.Yet rarely have the two generation-defining stars so closely intertwined their musical fates as this week, when they released highly anticipated, long-delayed albums within five days of each other, with very different rollout strategies.“Certified Lover Boy,” Drake’s sixth studio album, came out just before 1 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, the culmination of nearly a year of teases, promotional singles and false starts. The album — which had been scheduled for release in January but was mentioned obliquely as early as 2019 — features 21 tracks and a huge complement of guest stars, including Jay-Z, Travis Scott, Lil Baby, Future, Young Thug, Rick Ross and Lil Wayne.West’s 10th album, “Donda,” arrived on Sunday with considerably more friction, which may have only fed its hype. Originally slated for July 2020 — and then July 23 of this year, then Aug. 6 — the 27-track LP came in the wake of three stadium-size listening events, during which West played the work-in-progress; built a replica of his childhood home; staged a mock wedding ceremony with his estranged wife, Kim Kardashian West; welcomed polarizing guests like DaBaby and Marilyn Manson; and declined to speak a word.“Donda” has its own deep bench of superstar guests, including the Weeknd, Lil Baby, Pop Smoke and Roddy Ricch. A handful, like Scott, Jay-Z and Young Thug, appear on both LPs. (Few women appear on either release.) Their stuffed track lists have become a standard industry strategy to maximize streams, and may be a key weapon in the chart contest between “Donda” and “Certified Lover Boy.”While pushing cultural buttons was a significant part of West’s release strategy, Drake invited some scrutiny too, by sampling R. Kelly in his new track “TSU.” Kelly’s “Half on a Baby” (1998) — in its full version, not the more easily accessible radio edit — has a symphonic-sounding synthesizer preamble. Drake used that for “TSU,” also for an introductory segment.Kelly, who has long faced accusations of sexual abuse, is currently on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting anyone across state lines for prostitution, and many people on social media took offense. (John Lennon and Paul McCartney also have a credit, for the Beatles’ “Michelle,” which is used in the album’s opening track, “Champagne Poetry.”)West, who has taken to covering his face in public, opted for a plain black cover for “Donda,” while Drake went splashier. “Certified Lover Boy” uses readily meme-able album art from the British contemporary artist Damien Hirst that depicts emojis of 12 pregnant women of various skin tones.But even as West struck first, “Donda,” named for the rapper’s late mother, was still being updated the morning of its release, with additional versions of multiple songs added to the track list. West claimed on Instagram that his record company had “put my album out without my approval” and that it had initially blocked a track featuring Manson and DaBaby. (“Jail Pt. 2,” with appearances by both, is now included on the album. Def Jam, his label, declined to comment.) Additional collaborators slated to be on the album, including Chris Brown and Soulja Boy, expressed their own discontent with the finished product.Yet even amid the scheduling bumps, mixed reviews and nontraditional weekend release — which left West two fewer days of sales and streams than a standard Friday drop — “Donda” is on pace to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard chart with one of the biggest opening weeks of the year. According to Def Jam, “Donda” had 180 million streams in its first 24 hours.The cover of Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy.”Based on Drake’s streaming dominance — he was the first artist to hit 50 billion streams on Spotify, by at least one count — “Certified Lover Boy” is all but certain to reign as one of the year’s biggest releases. And although Drake’s first-week sales will not be finalized until Sept. 13, precluding a direct repeat of the West vs. 50 Cent chart face-off of 2007, fans have been eager to compare the two new works, commercially and artistically, in line with the pair’s latest stoking of their own long-simmering rivalry. (The rappers’ record labels share a parent company in Universal Music Group.)After Drake appeared to poke fun at West’s age on a guest verse for a Trippie Redd track last month — Drake is 34 and West a decade older — West posted a text exchange online in which he wrote, “You will never recover. I promise you,” and included an image of Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker. (West also uploaded a screenshot of what appeared to be Drake’s Toronto address before deleting it. Drake seemed to respond with multiple photos of himself laughing.)Listeners on Friday were quick to notice Drake’s apparent ripostes to West. “Give that address to your driver, make it your destination/’Stead of just a post out of desperation,” he raps on the track “7am on Bridle Path.”The digs, in song and on social media, continued a pattern of petty slights, direct and indirect, between the two that dates back years, with the relationship having seemingly curdled irrevocably around Drake’s musical beef with Pusha-T, a West affiliate, in 2018.In the years since, the artists’ paths diverged, even as they occasionally butted heads online and on record. West embraced former President Donald J. Trump, embarked on an ill-fated run for president and turned toward gospel, releasing a Christian-themed album, “Jesus Is King,” in October 2019. He vowed to stop cursing in his music, a promise he upheld on “Donda,” even censoring his guests.Drake, meanwhile, released a steady stream of music even as he made himself more scarce. In the spring of 2020, the rapper followed the single “Toosie Slide,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, with a surprise mixtape, “Dark Lane Demo Tapes,” featuring songs that had leaked online. He promised a studio album that summer, and the would-be lead single, “Laugh Now Cry Later,” hit No. 2 in August. But the album never came; another holdover, the three-song EP “Scary Hours 2,” followed in March and resulted in another No. 1 single (“What’s Next”).After months of only cryptic updates on the album’s status, a collision course with West began to seem inevitable as the summer wound down and the two A-list rappers resurfaced. As West toured a still-in-progress “Donda,” Drake appeared to stake a claim to a Sept. 3 release date late last month with a lo-fi, guerrilla-looking ad that cut in during an ESPN “SportsCenter” broadcast.And on a Trippie Redd track titled “Betrayal,” the rapper indicated that the hubbub surrounding West’s “Donda” would not affect his final release date. This time, Drake rapped, “it’s set in stone.” More

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      Kanye West’s ‘Donda’ Era, on a Chaotic Stage

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      West is still one of the most influential pop stars of the century, but multidisciplinary spectacle is more his goal than music now, and he isn’t the star of his own 10th album.For the last few years, Kanye West — perhaps tired of the insufficiency of the album, or music-making in general — has been seeking increasingly grand canvases for his various projects. There was the 2016 Yeezy Season 3 fashion show and album debut held at Madison Square Garden. His Imax film, “Jesus Is King,” filmed in James Turrell’s land art installation Roden Crater, in Arizona. A domed prototype for affordable housing built on his property in Calabasas, Calif. A vast expanse of ranch outside Cody, Wyo., annexed for work and play.And now, for the rollout of his 10th album, “Donda,” stadiums — two listening sessions cum performance pieces in Atlanta starting in July, and a third last week in Chicago. New music may have been the raison d’être for these events, but it is not his sole goal, not anymore, not really.Instead, these last few weeks have been album rollout as multimedia soap opera. The music itself has been in flux — the version of “Donda” played at each event has been different — and West’s refining of it in public, a method he introduced with “The Life of Pablo,” is his true artistic project now.It is an ideal strategy for West, still among the most influential pop stars of the 21st century, an artist who is almost incalculably popular and yet almost wholly removed from the pop music mainstream. Gathering tens of thousands of people on short notice and engaging in a public conversation about what his music might sound like may be the purest expression of his fame now.“Donda” is an album dedicated to the memory of West’s mother, who died in 2007, but the LP is only intermittently emotional.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Universal Music GroupBut crucially, big stages are easy places to hide. They are terrific distractions. And as West has cycled through periods of public tumult in recent years — his hospitalization, his assertion that slavery was a choice, his embrace of Donald Trump, his fitful 2020 run for president — he has simultaneously been orchestrating ever more complex creative projects while slowly removing himself from their emotional center.That is a challenging place from which to launch “Donda” — named for West’s mother, who died in 2007 following a cosmetic surgery procedure — an urgent but sometimes center-less album that finds common ground between the scabrousness of “Yeezus” and the ethereality of his recent gospel turn. Given that it is an album dedicated to his mother’s memory, “Donda” is only intermittently emotional — more an achievement of texture and logistics than catharsis.West remains capable of orchestrating impressive pop music. “Hurricane,” with sweet vocals from the Weeknd, is disarmingly pretty. “Junya” pulses with church organ and SoundCloud rap puckishness. “Believe What I Say,” which samples Lauryn Hill — one of the few times you hear a woman’s voice on this album — is among the most easeful songs West has made in a decade.Several songs, including “No Child Left Behind,” “Jesus Lord” and “24,” sound like kin to the music West was making during his embrace of gospel. (He excised all cursing from this album, even bleeping out his guests.) But there are songs, like the recycled Pop Smoke collaboration “Tell the Vision” and the drowsy “Moon,” that feel purely decorative. As a Kanye West album, it feels more like a stabilization than an innovation.Once a wordplay-obsessed, self-aware lyricist, West has shifted in the last decade to a more terse and immediate approach, one that complements his musical shifts toward the industrial and the spiritual. His late-period music makes a trade-off between complexity and directness. His songs pound and annihilate now. They’re corporeal studies of psychological hurt.That approach went hand in hand with how West channeled his angst at last week’s Chicago listening event. He had a faithful re-creation of his childhood home built on a hilltop at the center of the stadium, then encircled it with rows of sentry dancers and black vehicles driving in concentric circles. This was a phalanx of protection, a way to consecrate and protect the place he was raised.He also presented the home as a safe harbor. At the beginning of the show, he was almost immediately joined on the porch by Marilyn Manson and DaBaby — a Kanye’s Ark of the canceled and disbarred. Onstage, the guests looked bored, purposefully bored, above-reproach bored. (Manson is facing accusations of sexual abuse. DaBaby recently made homophobic statements during a festival performance.) West’s choice to include these widely derided figures exists somewhere between empathy for those who have been shunned for their misdeeds (suggesting that even those who have sinned are worthy of love) and aligning with the maligned for easy outrage.If that is a coherent politics, it is animated by West’s longstanding sense of grievance that he is misunderstood, but it was ultimately a distraction from the album’s intended tribute. Also, even though the scale of the event was overwhelming, it was less elegant than earlier concert performances where he communed with his mother’s spirit.DaBaby and Marilyn Manson joined West onstage in Chicago.Joshua MellinThis continues on the album itself, which is 27 tracks long, nearly two hours of music; it is sonically cohesive but also overlong and full of heavily assembled songs — multiple producers and writers, a bounty of male guests. West has long been shifting into conductor mode, and on several songs here, he is the ballast but not the focus.Jay Electronica has a commanding verse on “Donda.” Fivio Foreign has a great verse on “Donda.” Lil Baby has a very good verse on “Donda.” Lil Durk has a striking verse on “Donda.” Sheek Louch, who sounds like he’s been mainlining Ka records, has an excellent verse on “Donda.” Jay-Z has a decent verse on “Donda.” Westside Gunn has a lovely verse on “Donda.”West, though? Fewer than you’d think. The more you listen for West on “Donda,” the less you really hear him. The more fragmentary the lyrics are, the less satisfying they are.But what keeps him from being a shadow presence on his own album is his ear for hooks, the way he can distill one quick phrase — be it a goof, a talking-to or an exultation — into something utterly sticky. “I know God breathed on this.” “He’s done miracles on me.” “Is to lay me or play me a bigger flex though?”West has long wielded the voices of others to amplify his own — this has been true at least since the Hawaii sessions that birthed “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” one of his essential albums. As he’s become less of a full-time musician and more of a polymath who sometimes makes music, that tendency has grown, getting perhaps its purest expression just before the start of the pandemic, when the majority of his music-making came in the form of live performances of the Sunday Service Choir, a gospel troupe he assembled and directed but rarely contributed vocals to. At that point, it seemed as if West might be permanently decentering himself, or at least using his success primarily as a launching platform for others.The “Donda” era realigns things, more in keeping with how West released “The Life of Pablo” and “Ye,” his last pre-gospel albums. There are, at the moment, at least four versions of “Donda” — the official one released on streaming services (though there’s no guarantee that one’s not in flux), and the ones West played at each of his listening events.Instead of focusing on “Donda” as an album, or a playlist version of an album, it’s helpful to think of it more like theater, an iterative affair that evolves a little each time you encounter it. In the last few weeks, it has gone from regional company to Off Broadway to the Great White Way — each stop on that journey matters.West encircled the re-creation of his childhood home with rows of sentry dancers and black vehicles, a way to consecrate and protect the place he was raised.Joshua MellinTypically, musicians keep listeners walled off from their process (at least until the 50th anniversary boxed set), but West has been contending that the assembly is part of the art. Not sure which version of a song is better? Include both, as West does with four different titles here. Not sure if your album is complete? Play it for fans and get feedback in real time. (Online chatter suggested he was paying attention to fan reactions to help shape what he would tweak or adjust.)And why not monetize the uncertainty? West thrives in an attention economy, and with these live events, has found a way to make this interstitial period revenue-generating and curiosity-piquing.This structurelessness allows “Donda” to function not simply as an album but also a marker of time. The day after the Lox dominated Dipset at Verzuz, they took a private jet to Atlanta, where they laid down verses that became part of “Jesus Lord Pt 2.” The two versions of “Jail” on the album capture the surprise rapprochement between West and his old friend and mentor Jay-Z, as captured in the second “Donda” listening, and also the head-scratcher of the third session, when fans heard a version of that song which scrapped Jay-Z in favor of DaBaby. Both takes survive here.If little else, the “Donda” rollout has served as a demonstration that West can take scrambled eggs and, with a few weeks’ effort, make them something like whole. And, perhaps something of a surprise given the ire he inspires in some circles, he can still corral chart-topping levels of attention. “Donda” is expected to have one of the biggest opening weeks of the year.That is a big victory for spectacle. And yet the most striking jolt on “Donda” — indeed, in this whole rollout cycle — comes in an exceedingly rare moment of intimacy, when West raps about his disintegrating marriage on “Lord I Need You.” Despite how intensely you can hear West throughout “Donda,” you almost never really see him; this is one of those moments, though.“Too many complaints made it hard for me to think/Would you shut up? I can’t hear myself drink,” he raps, with patience and regret and a tinge of the absurd twists he favors in his lyrics whenever they threaten to get too serious. But when he raps “God got us, baby/God got the children,” it’s hard to hear something other than bare exhaustion and sadness — it’s pure surrender. “Donda” is a huge stage, but this is the only moment West stands at its center, undisturbed, raw. More

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      How Kanye West Is Using Fashion in the 'Donda' Era

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      Kanye West may or may not be imminently releasing “Donda,” his 10th solo album, but over the course of the past few weeks, this era in his career has already established its own signature aesthetic: all black, military, asceticism on an epic scale.It’s a now familiar part of West’s album rollout strategy: clothes to match, or make, the mood. Given that nowadays he spends as much time focused on his fashion enterprises as his music (likely more), it’s unsurprising that shifts in those two creative areas move in parallel.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about West’s use of fashion as a signifier for musical evolution, the ways he has been alternately embraced and rejected by the fashion industry, and how musicians like Frank Ocean and Tyler, the Creator are walking in the path he carved.Guests:Rachel Tashjian, fashion critic at GQSteff Yotka, senior fashion news editor at Vogue More

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      Kanye West Unveils ‘Donda’ Album, With a Verse From Jay-Z

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      As fans packed the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta to get a first listen, West danced in a spotlight but chose not to say a word.ATLANTA — A man who is rarely short on words, Kanye West didn’t even have a microphone.Premiering his new album, “Donda,” in front of a packed crowd at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium here on Thursday night, the rapper, who has become known as much for his failed presidential run and his pending divorce as his music, chose not to say a single thing.Dressed in a red jacket with matching pants, West walked around on a white tarp, delivering outsize gestures and dance moves to his new music for less than an hour before leaving. It was a decidedly different tone from his previous public listening sessions, including one he held in 2016 at Madison Square Garden before the release of “The Life of Pablo.” For much of the night, West stood in the center of the stadium’s football field, in the middle of a spotlight, surrounded by fog. When he walked around the venue, he spent a good portion of his time in front of the section where his four children with Kim Kardashian, North, Saint, Psalm and Chicago, were seated. Despite the fact that she has filed for divorce from West, Kardashian and her sister Khloe were also in attendance.“Donda,” West’s 10th studio album, was scheduled to be released by G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam Recordings on Friday, but it did not appear at midnight, when new music typically reaches streaming services, and still has not surfaced. Representatives for West did not respond to requests for comment about the plan for the album’s release.The album, his first since 2019’s “Jesus Is King,” was named after the rapper’s late mother, Donda West, who began her career as a professor at Morris Brown College in Atlanta in the 1970s. Kanye West was born in the city during this time, although the family would eventually relocate to Chicago. His mother died in 2007 from complications related to plastic surgery. Presumably in honor of her Atlanta ties, West gave 5,000 tickets to Thursday’s listening session to faculty and students at historically black colleges and universities in the city, including Morris Brown, Clark Atlanta, Morehouse and Spelman.Fans were given few details about “Donda” before the event, and the excessively loud speakers at the stadium made it hard to decipher lyrics or other key details. What was clear from the public listening session, which also streamed live via Apple Music, was that the album continued to explore themes of religion both sonically and lyrically, and featured a bevy of guest artists, including a new collaboration with Jay-Z.The lyrics from “Donda” seemed to have little to do with the rapper’s late mother directly, although the album does feature her voice in a few interludes. (“No matter what, you never abandon your family,” she says at one point.) The first track that was played during the event featured West repeatedly chanting “We gonna be OK” over an organ as the crowd illuminated the stadium with cellphone lights. Even on the more boastful songs (“Excuse my manners, I got status. Excuse my problems, I got commas”), there were still heavy nods to his Christian faith. One hook from the album featured the lyrics “I know God breathed on this,” as well as the cheeky lyric “God the father like Maury.”“Donda,” West’s 10th studio album, was scheduled to be released on Friday but has not yet surfaced.John CanonWhile an official track list has not been released, the songs played during the listening session featured guest appearances from rappers including Pusha T, Lil Baby and, perhaps most surprisingly, Jay-Z. Despite their close relationship early in West’s career, they had been open about the strain in their friendship in recent years. The new collaboration teased a “return of the throne,” nodding to the pair’s joint album “Watch the Throne” a decade ago. One Jay-Z lyric appeared to reference West’s onetime support for President Trump: “Hold up, Donda, I’m with your baby when I touch back road/told him stop all of that red cap, we goin’ home.”A few lyrics on the album seemingly nod at his separation from Kardashian, including one where West pleads, “I’m losing my family.” Elsewhere he raps, “Single life ain’t so bad.”It is unclear if the songs played at the event represent the entirety of “Donda.” West, who appeared to still be working on the album in the hours leading up to the event, according to his social media, is known to make changes to projects up until they are released, and sometimes afterward. (Jay-Z’s verse was recorded at 4 p.m. on the day of the listening session, according to Young Guru, the rapper’s longtime recording engineer.)The crowd for the event packed the Atlanta stadium, where there are no restrictions on crowd size despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Attendees were given paneled posters that featured a blurry image of the rapper and his mother. The back of the poster included instructions on how to transform it into a fan, as well as the words, “Mom West was a remarkable woman and a role model who we all loved dearly and cherished. We are fortunate that our lives crossed paths.” Merchandise with a childhood photo of West’s mother was also available, in addition to a beige long-sleeve shirt that featured the name of the album, the date and a Mercedes-Benz logo.Although it had only been announced three days earlier, the listening session attracted fans from outside Atlanta, too, including three friends from Madison, Wis. The trio said they traveled from Madison to Milwaukee at 3 a.m. to catch a 5:30 a.m. flight to Atlanta.“Kanye’s the best producer/rapper out there,” Sam Brink, 22, said. “That justifies the money” the friends spent to attend, he added. Even before the event began, he said he had high expectations for the album and hoped it would be released as scheduled.“I’ll put it this way, if it doesn’t drop, we’re flipping cars,” Brink said with a chuckle. By the time the friends were headed back to Wisconsin on an 8:30 a.m. flight Friday morning, there was still no sign of “Donda” on streaming services. More

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      Is the Yeezy Gap Jacket Really Any Good?

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      The first product of the much-hyped collaboration made a big splash. But can Kanye West actually save Gap?The reveal of the first Yeezy Gap jacket on June 8, a year after the partnership between Kanye West and the beleaguered maker of American basics was announced, went pretty much as expected.First came the crazed excitement, the release of all that pent-up expectation: OMG! OMG! The future is finally here. And on Kanye’s birthday!Then, when it was clear you could preorder the jacket, the rush to get there first was on. CNBC excitedly reported it had sold out! So fast! The news went viral. It turned out to be fake.(Actually, the site crashed and is now back up. This is a preorder, not a limited edition drop. There is no finite number of sales because no actual jackets have yet been produced. You can keep buying for six more days.)And finally, the backlash: Wait, the jacket, which is made of recycled blue nylon, actually looks sort of like a trash bag. Also a deflated balloon.Now that 24 hours have elapsed and the dust has settled, perhaps it is time to step back and consider the jacket itself: Is it any good? And is it likely to do what it is supposed to do — what this whole partnership with Mr. West is supposed to do — which is wipe the slate clean, offer a new start and make Gap, which was struggling even before the pandemic, cool again?A qualified maybe.via GapThe jacket itself arrived like a puffer from another planet, suspended bodiless in the air of a Gap Instagram post or projected ghostlike against buildings in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, wafting slightly in the breeze. It is made from recycled nylon with a polyester fill (which one hopes is also recycled, though Gap did not specify; if it isn’t, that would be kind of … ahem). It is unisex and oversize with a squishy, tactile look and curving, tubular arms. There is a seam up the backbone and under each arm.It has no closures or additions to material of any kind, which may be interesting from a conceptual point of view but slightly problematic from a functional one, especially if, say, your hands are full so you can’t clutch it shut, and there’s a big wind.It also costs $200, which is pretty high for Gap, albeit lowish for Yeezy. It is named, in a Warhol way, the “round jacket,” because it looks, you know, round.And it is apparently the next stage of Mr. West’s new aesthetic, which has to do with reduction and the stripping away of excess. (See his most recent Paris Fashion Week return, where he described his clothes as made for “the service industry,” though it was hard not to think the service industry he was talking about was located on planet Jakku of “Star Wars.”)Mr. West himself had modeled his creation a few days earlier while out and about, and the brief appearance showed just how big and duvet-like the jacket, which swallowed his hands, actually is.To a certain extent, of course, it doesn’t matter if the jacket is flattering, or pragmatic. It is a first, and this is a historic collaboration from both a business and cultural perspective, so it will serve as a sort of artifact, or totem. The deal between Mr. West and Gap is long-term and lucrative; both brands are, in their own ways, part of the story of our times. Those who rushed to preorder may get their jackets and find out that they don’t like them at all, but they will do just fine on the secondary market. There are no doubt many who, schooled in sneaker entrepreneurship, bought them expressly for resale.That won’t affect Gap’s ability to boast about the sales figures of the jacket, though it may not set a reliable precedent when it comes to the next drops, and the drops after that. Gap is not a provider of limited resources, and limited resources are, of course, the most exciting ones. Though maybe the plan is to change all that.It seemed that way at first because Gap wiped its entire Instagram history to show simply the jacket, as though it was Day 1, a move that is rarely taken by an established brand since it seems to repudiate everything its customers bought before. See when Hedi Slimane arrived at Celine.And it also seemed that way because the jacket was apparently introduced and offered only in the United States.It turns out, however, that an international rollout is imminent, though Gap would not say exactly when. So Yeezy fans outside America don’t have to plot how to get their hands on a jacket after all.As for investors, Gap’s share price rose slightly on the day of the release but not in any unusual way. (At least it didn’t drop; maybe investors were relieved that Mr. West didn’t carry through on his threat to not make any product unless he got a Gap board seat.)But here’s the thing: Cool and accessibility are antithetical concepts; the more accessible and omnipresent something becomes, the less cool. If Mr. West and Gap can change that, they will have changed a lot more than style and their own reputations; they will have changed how we think. The real test will come with a full collection.Especially because Gap recently announced another new deal, for homewares — with Walmart. More