A little under a month ago, Kanye West announced the release date for his next album, Donda 2, setting the palindromic February 22 as his target date. Kanye’s had issues with getting projects out the door on their due dates in the past, so it’s natural to wonder whether Donda 2 continued that pattern. So, has Donda 2 been released yet?
Well, the answer is a little more complicated than you might think. For one thing, it might be hard to tell for a while, because just four days before the album’s expected release, Kanye announced that he would not be putting it on DSPs for streaming. Instead, the album will only be available via his Stem Player device. The gizmo, which operates like any number of other portable midi controllers on the market today, will come preloaded with the album for $200 and can only be purchased from an official website.
Kanye explained his reasoning in an Instagram post, writing, “Today artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes. It’s time to free music from this oppressive system. It’s time to take control and build our own.” With the album coming pre-loaded on a device that would probably take a week to ship, considering the earliest anyone would have known about it was just four days ago, it might be a while before we have concrete confirmation that Donda 2 was released as scheduled.
