Kanye West’s Listening Event For ‘Donda’ Is Finally Underway After A Lengthy Delay

More than a year after he first announced the project, Kanye West finally revealed when the world would receive his tenth album, Donda. The rapper announced the project would arrive this Friday, July 23. As expected, fans all over the world quickly built up their excitement for its release. To build up the anticipation for Donda, Kanye also announced a huge listening event for the project set to take place at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the 75,000-capacity venue that’s home to the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons.

The event was slated for an 8 p.m. kick-off time, but to the surprise of no one, the event did not start at its intended time.

Thankfully, nearly two hours later, Kanye kicked things off for the night. The show began with what seemed to be a recording of Kanye repeatedly singing, “We gonna be okay,” as an organ played loudly in the background. The camera panned out to show him rocking a red bubble jacket while moving all across the stage, which was essentially the full stadium floor covered in some type of white material.

https://twitter.com/onnthinice/status/1417938651451961344?5=12

Prior to the show, Kanye was spotted backstage at the stadium putting the final touches on the album. This includes sequencing the project’s presumed tracklist, making last-second tweaks with producer and engineer Mike Dean, and apparently inviting acts like Playboi Carti and 2 Chainz to record additional verses for Donda.

Rumors of the arrival of Donda first began when Kanye and Tyler The Creator were spotted in the studio together, presumable working on the album together. Shortly afterward, the album was confirmed for a release through a Beats By Dre commercial featuring track and field star Sha’Carri Richardson that also featured his currently unreleased track, “No Child Left Behind.”

You can watch a livestream of the listening event for Donda here.