Mike Dean Insists That He’s Still Working With Kanye West On ‘Donda’: ‘The Album Continues’

For an album that we know is more or less complete, barring any extreme changes, the process toward the release of Kanye West’s tenth album, Donda, has been an extremely drawn-out effort. While the wait has certainly tested the patience of fans, one could assume that the constant work behind the scenes on the album may be a nuisance for some collaborators and that appeared to be the case for producer and engineer Mike Dean, who is a frequent collaborator of the rapper.

Thanks to a string of tweets from Dean on Saturday, many fans concluded that he quit working on Kanye’s upcoming project, but the producer insists that’s not the case.

It all started when Saturday evening when Dean sent out a number of tweets that seemed to be rooted in frustration. They included brief messages like “F*CK THIS” and “good to be at the house!!!” as well as longer ones where he writes, “100000% FOCUS ON MY SHOW PRODUCTION FOR NEXT WEEK. GONNA BE LIKE COACHELLA IN A 650 PERSON VENUE!!” A Kanye fan replied and wrote, “Fine but then go help Kanye PLZ,” to which Dean answered, “Helping myself. Thx.” Another user mentioned the producer and said, “mike dean is more than just donda guys,” and Dean replied, “A lot more. Very much more.”

Elsewhere, a fan who took notice of Dean’s tweets concluded in posts of their own that Dean’s messages were about his work on Donda. The Twitter user labeled the album’s process as “toxic” and “the weirdest rollout over.” The producer then slipped into the Twitter conversation and wrote, “Toxic. That’s it.” There was another message from Dean that called for fans to direct their album questions to the artists rather than to their collaborators.

“Don’t ask me about utopia or any other albums drop date,” Dean wrote referencing Travis Scott’s highly-anticipated fourth album. “Ask the artists. I’m not the decision makers here !!

Despite all of this, Dean returned to Twitter on Sunday morning to clear the air and assure fans that he has not stepped away from any projects. “I haven’t quit anything,” he shared in a tweet. “The album continues. Lol. People read too much into tweets. Lol.”