Kanye West announces ‘Donda 2’ album, release date
The 22-time Grammy winner says Future will executive produce the sequel to his 2021 album, 'Donda.'
Kanye West may have new music coming sooner than later. The producer/rapper announced via social media that he will be releasing Donda 2 on Feb. 22.
West posted a photo of his childhood home on fire, elevated in the sky like a billboard, to Instagram on Thursday with the caption “DONDA2 COMING 2 22 22 EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY FUTURE.”
The burning house imagery replicates West torching a life-sized replica of his childhood home during his third and final Donda listening session at Chicago’s Soldier Field last August. No other details as far as guest artists or a tracklist were given.
Future and West have only collaborated on music a handful of times in the past. West was a guest rapper on Future’s “I Won” from his 2014 sophomore album, Honest. Future appeared on Pusha T’s 2013 track “Pain,” co-produced by West.
Despite their limited collaborations in the past, West and Future have been seen together frequently over the past two months. The “Mask Off” rapper brought out the Chicago mogul as a guest during his 2021 Rolling Loud set in December. The two also threw a surprise New Year’s Eve party in Miami.
It was at that Miami party that West met his current girlfriend, actress Julia Fox, who said on a Jan. 13 episode of her Spotify Podcast, Forbidden Fruits, that West and Future have been working together on music in the studio, and the songs she’s heard are “f— insane.”
The 22-time Grammy winner is only five months removed from the release of his 10th solo album, Donda, debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 chart following its August release with 309,000 album-equivalent units earned its first week.
A deluxe version of Donda was released in November, extending the tracklist from 27 songs to 32, including the previously leaked collaboration with Andre 3000, “Life of the Party,” as theGrio reported.
Donda, named after his deceased mother, Dr. Donda West, accounts for four of West’s five Grammy Award nominations this coming April, including Album of the Year, Best Rap Album, Best Rap Song for “Jail,” featuring Jay-Z, and Best Melodic Rap Performance from “Hurricane,” featuring The Weeknd and Lil Baby.
Although West has announced there will be a new album, he has a history of announcing titles that are never released. In September 2018, just three months after his eighth album, Ye, dropped, West announced the Yandhi album and began to promote it with a Sept. 29 release date. However, it was never formally released.
In November 2019, he teased the release of a sequel to his Jesus Is King album, to be mixed by Dr. Dre, but that also never came to be.
Even if Donda 2 does see the light of day, it’s not expected to drop on Feb. 22. Most of West’s albums didn’t come out on the date they were first scheduled. From his 2004 debut The College Dropout, to the release of his 2012 G.O.O.D. music compilation Cruel Summer, all but one of his albums were delayed, according to Complex. The exception, 2007’s Graduation, was released a week earlier than the original date.
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