The Atonement of Kanye West

It is 12 am on August 6th and there is still no trace of Donda. Between rumors, Apple Music screens and more or less revealing tweets, the attitude in these cases should be indignant, tired and perhaps even disappointed by the umpteenth blank shot fired by Kanye West after a wait lasting more than two weeks. Two weeks in which expectation was combined with curiosity, in which Kanye first hid inside a stadium and then revealed himself to his fans with an event that entered history. That staged at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta was in many ways the definitive consecration of Kanye West as an artist and performer, but above all as one of the most important personalities not only in rap but in pop culture of the last 50 years.

Waiting to finally be able to listen to DONDA we can enjoy the idea of ​​a record capable of recalling Jay-Z, Pusha-T, Travis Scott, The Weeknd and a very long series of names united around Ye under the same roof. Beyond the music there is the performance, in a symbolic atonement that lasted 14 years and ended with the most significant moment of all: the ascension of Kanye West. Since his death in 2007, the figure of Donda has always been present in Kanye's life and career, becoming in some cases almost a burden from which the artist felt the need to free himself. An elaboration of mourning that lasted years, which went through alternating phases and in many cases problematic and became an obsession. On the one hand the now iconic performance of Hey Mama sung by Donda and Kanye in the kitchen of the house, on the other the equally iconic but much more recent one in which West dressed completely in black and with his face covered is lifted into the sky in a rapprochement symbolic with the mother.

Two moments to tell an entire career, the evolution of an artist who went from polo shirts to Balenciaga outfits, from home cooking to a stage set up by Demna Gvasalia and despite everything still able to surprise us. For some time now, Kanye seems to be acting almost casually, in an attitude totally in contrast with the marketing thought to the millimeter that we have been used to seeing for years. Behind the randomness, however, there is the spontaneity, the free action that belongs only to the great artists, but above all the one able to make the artist a man, making us emparize with his music and with his choices. After the records, the Grammys, the mental breakdowns and the controversies that surrounded him, last night Kanye West made history again, managing to make the release of a record that still does not exist a cultural event, a moment that will remain as a point of comparison for anyone who comes after him. Nothing new, it's called history making, a practice Kanye knows well.