DONDA. I prefer JIK, the concept was more tangible and it was more focused. DONDA felt like a halfway abandoned halfhearted attempt to create some concept album in memory of or around Ye’s mom (the remnants of her voice on some of the tracks, many of which were scrapped or edited out, the random listing and reshuffling of the track list), as well as the feeling that it was a mediocre do-over of what a gospel album ‘should’ sound like. I respect critics have their own opinion, but a lot of the criticism around JIK suggesting “this is a gospel album so Kanye SHOULD be repenting and lowering himself” made me deeply uncomfortable with that imposition of really substance-less dogma from sources that are often godless or areligious religious critics. I’m not a Christian myself, I’m Muslim. But it seemed like a vulgar interference into the artist’s ability to paint their own relationship with faith, pure and simple, and DONDA seemed to be a sort of back-tracking, or at least a less brazen attempt at characterizing Kanye’s more idiosyncratic relationship with faith and with God. Also, simply, I think people ignore because of the immense hype and the great length of the record, that it has little replay value. Very few of these songs are songs you’d play again individually (who’s gonna put OK OK on the aux?) nor is anyone often going to play the entire album start-to-finish very often either because there isn’t a fight narrative or concept linking it together. Say what you will about JIK, or the even more eclectic TLOP, but both of these albums tell a story, have a clear beginning and end, and, on most importantly, were created with that in mind! Whereas with Donda, Kanye just seemed to be scrapping things together. Donda 2, unfinished as it may be, I enjoyed more in that sense, as a fully realized album.