HEAVEN AND HELL

Indeep once sang, “Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life,” and although my relationship with Kanye West's 10th album Donda was never quite that drastic a situation, I feel much the same way about it.

It’s been four years today since Donda was released, and I still believe it to be the best album of this decade by a considerable distance.

Of course, this is purely subjective, and I appreciate that (Kan)Ye is not to everyone’s taste. But as a stadium-sized project—literally, with (Kan)Ye renting out a stadium at a reported rate of $1 million per day to record the album—and as the culmination of a ten-album run, this was a 10/10. Many now regard it as the retirement album of the artist formerly known as Kanye West, ignoring his afterlife in the underworld with Donda 2 (2022), Vultures 1 (2024), and Vultures 2 plus Bully (2025).

For me, I just remember the incredible, epic rollout: the late-night listening events held in multiple stadiums across America, and the sense of this awe-inspiring art project unfurling before fans’ eyes, constructed in the white heat of the moment. In an age of AI and carefully managed commercial artists contriving to seem spontaneous via social media accounts, this was the hip-hop equivalent of watching Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel—sonic ambition at its most legendary.

There are simply too many great tracks on this album to single out (many of which I've already written about), but if I'm leaving you all with one on this four-year anniversary, then it’s Heaven and Hell, which seems like as clear a statement about (Kan)Ye's desire to smash the glass ceiling of the 'matrix' and break through to a new paradigm (for better or for worse—many would say worse).

Nevertheless, I take my musical heroes (for better and for worse), and as the saying goes, real recognises real—and this magnum opus has lived with me since it first came out, with no sign of its power fading out anytime soon.