There are few albums in recent memory that have been quite so divisive as Donda. Kanye West’s long-teased 10th LP has gone through many iterations and titles, and finally dropped yesterday as a 27-track, almost 2 hour behemoth. Length alone should never be a detractor to one’s critical reception of art – but in this case, the album simply fails to uphold the quality of its strongest moments for that entire duration. That’s really okay, because two hours of superb music is nearly impossible to pull off. In forming a critical analysis of Donda, however, one must take all moments into account – not just its finer cuts – and the results are middling. At its core though, Donda had the potential to be nearly perfect and go toe to toe with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as West’s best and most ambitious work. I’m sure this will be done a thousand different ways over the coming weeks, but below is my re-imagined and condensed version of Donda – an iteration that I almost certainly would have hailed as superb or a classic.

I left ‘Jail’ as the opener (we’re not counting ‘Donda Chant’ in this case) because I think it is the ideal adrenaline pumping scene-setter. I’ve heard some complaints already about ‘God Breathed’s early placement with that long outro, but I’m okay with it – it cements Donda as the imaginative and ambitious piece that it is. Most of this re-imagining was just me trimming the church-organ lathered gospel songs, because after a while they collectively dull down the impact of genius moments like the badass banger ‘Heaven and Hell’. I knew from the start that I wanted ‘Jesus Lord’ to be the penultimate track, because it is so powerful lyrically that I wanted it to have close to the “final say” on Donda. It doesn’t quite work as a closer though, and that’s where ‘Come to Life’ plays its role perfectly, stepping in with those gorgeous pianos to usher out the gritty emotions of ‘Jesus Lord’ with grace and elegance. Elsewhere, I kept stronger hip-hop moments like ‘Off The Grid’, ‘Ok Ok’, and ‘Pure Souls’, as well as The Weeknd’s feature on ‘Hurricane’ and the obvious highlight ‘Believe What I Say’. All in all, I think this 10-track cut (still clocking in at an LP-length 50 minutes) makes for the best possible iteration of Donda. I even used one of the alternate versions of artwork, which blows a simple black square out of the water. What do you think? Let me know if this reimagining enhances your enjoyment of Donda. I know it’s how I’ll be listening to it moving forward.

Reimagined Donda Tracklist:

1. Jail
2. God Breathed
3. Off The Grid
4. Heaven and Hell
5. Ok Ok
6. Believe What I Say
7. Pure Souls
8. Hurricane
9. Jesus Lord
10. Come to Life