The fans have been waiting, and lucky for them, singer, songwriter and rapper Kanye West delivered. The dramatic lead-up along with sudden tweets from West finally left fans with his 10th and long-anticipated studio album, “Donda.”

“Donda” is dedicated to West’s mother, Donda West, after her death on Nov. 10, 2007. What would have been her 71 birthday passed over the summer on July 12, which is when West started to build the musical art that is “Donda”.

The tribute album developed some controversy on the road to its release. West provoked his fans by featuring rapper DaBaby’s on the tracklist for the song “Jail pt 2,” after Dababy’s homophobic comments were made at the Rolling Loud 2021 music festival in Miami, according to Complex. 

After the leak of West’s album by Universal Music Group, fans started to flood all the streaming arrive to get a taste of what they have been waiting for. “Donda” was finally released to the public officially on Aug 29, and here’s why we think it was worth the wait.

In all honesty, there were a total of three songs that were added to our playlists, while the rest were overly repetitive and not pleasing to listen to. The song “Donda Chant”, which is the first track on the album, is 53 seconds of R&B and soul singer-songwriter Syleena Johnson repeating the word, “Donda.” While there are songs that are complete skips, songs like “Jonah”, “Moon” and “Hurricane” help save the album from never being played in anyone’s car.

“Jonah” is the seventh song on the album and includes verses from Lil Durk and Vory. The song’s production and background beats are incredibly catchy because of the repetition, and West and his team added other auditory elements in the background such as beeping that resemble a hospital monitor, which may represent Durk’s experience in the hospital with his dying brother.

“Jonah” has a melancholy background and the lyrics talk about feeling lonely and in despair with “demons” and no one to help him. This song is a tribute to Jonah Ware, who was shot and died in Louisville on Aug. 8, according to GQ. 

“Moon,” West’s spiritual interlude, features singers and rappers, Kid Cudi and Don Toliver. At the beginning of the song, Toliver brings his angelic vocals to the song by singing “I want to go to the moon, don’t leave so soon,” with absolute silence in the background. 

The amount of autotune incorporated with Toliver’s voice was a perfect balance with the powerful instrumental as the song progresses in the back. But the real wow factor in this song is Cudi’s deep voice contrasting and harmonizing with Toliver’s higher pitch that gave us goosebumps. 

“Hurricane,” featuring rapper Lil Baby and singer the Weeknd, has hit over 65 million streams on Spotify as of Sept. 13 and currently sits at No. 1 on the Rolling Stone Top 100 Songs. The Weeknd begins the song by giving it a darker instrumental with the low pitch synths to start off the song and adds gospel elements of a choir singing throughout the song. 

West’s song can be categorized as pop-rap, trap and alternative R&B with an ethereal and psychedelic beat. West and Lil Baby add their personal struggles to the song.

With all the different albums released this year, music listeners were eager to hear some of their top rappers, R&B artists, and gospel musicians all together in the most anticipated album of the year. Donda has its flaws, but the pros outweigh the cons, and the features on this album are what makes it worth the wait.