Plagued with Sound Issues, Kanye West’s Donda 2 Listening Event in Miami Was a Star-Studded Fiasco

The post Plagued with Sound Issues, Kanye West’s Donda 2 Listening Event in Miami Was a Star-Studded Fiasco appeared first on Consequence.

The artist formerly known as Kanye West began his Tuesday (February 22nd) the same way he ended it: by trending on Twitter. Early in the day, Ye went viral for failing to drop his anticipated Donda 2 album at midnight — a slight made worse after he convinced die-hard fans to shell out more than $200 for his Stem Player, the only platform on which he says he will release the album.

Of course, this is not the first time Ye has kept fans waiting. Donda 2’s predecessor was famously marred by tweaks and false starts before it arrived on streaming platforms last summer.

Fans did not have to wait quite so long this time around, but the man who once said we should all be honored by his lateness made a characteristically delayed entrance to Miami’s LoanDepot Park, where he was set to premiere the record during a livestreamed event simulcast at IMAX theaters across the country and the Stem Player website.

The elaborate set — a dilapidated, burned out shotgun shack covered in smokey, black soot — went entirely unobscured as fans filled the stands. Nearly two hours after doors opened, fans speculated about guest appearances (backstage video of Elon Musk and Diddy circulated on social media as the audience waited), and weighed in on their likelihood of purchasing the Stem Player.

The crowd killed time by cheering when planes flew overhead, doing the wave, and nudging Ye to emerge with pleading applause. At 10:45 — nearly three hours after doors opened — the lights lowered and a pyro explosion illuminated the arena.

Fire emerged out of a window and roof of the wooden house before flames overtook the entire structure, mirroring the promo poster for the one-night-only show. A safety net lifted around the stage, the smell of smoke engulfed the arena, and the blazing light spotlighted ripples on the water on the ground surrounding the smoldering structure as the first two muffled songs from Donda 2 blared over the speakers.

Dressed head-to-toe in black leather, West emerged during the third song of the set; a distorted and synthesized vocal track with limited rhythmic backing. Dancing along to the track, his feet splashed in the water as he stomped around the stage. Foregoing a spotlight, Ye kept the focus on the music and the dramatic visuals at center stage — for most of the show, that was.

During his performance of “Security,” dozens of dancers and extras dressed in black streetwear and riot helmets populated the stage as West’s lyrics alluded to his beef with Pete Davidson. As he’s proven over the last few weeks by publicly harassing the mother of his children and her new boyfriend, a burning home is not a sufficient enough spectacle for Kanye West these days.

Throughout the 80-minute performance, which began with Donda 2 and included various tracks from Donda, West brought out embattled rapper DaBaby and alleged serial rapist Marilyn Manson for a performance of “Jail.” (Notably, the appearance came on the same day HBO premiered the trailer for Phoenix Rising, a two-part documentary in which actor Evan Rachel Wood details her abuse allegations against Manson.)

Thus, a performance which premiered West’s eleventh studio album and included guest appearances by Jack Harlow, Pusha T, Migos, Fivio Foreign and Alicia Keys was once again overshadowed by controversy and antagonism. That is par for the course for an artist who, over the past few years — and particularly over the last few weeks — has stoked public ire and dared his followers to continue supporting him while defending the indefensible.

While last year’s Donda was arguably his best-received effort in years, there is no denying the spectacle surrounding Kanye West has overtaken the attention on his music. In the six months between the release of Donda and tonight’s premiere of Donda 2, West made Julia Fox his muse of the month and his all-caps Instagram captions became more quotable than any of his lyrics have been for some time. Although it was set to music, the line the crowd screamed loudest tonight was borne out of tabloid fodder: “Got saved me from the crash/ Just so I could beat Pete Davidson’s ass.”

Elsewhere, Donda 2 included a sample of Kamala Harris’ celebratory “We did it, Joe!” phone call to Joe Biden, as well as a sample of his ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s Saturday Night Live monologue: “I married the best rapper of all time. Not only that, he’s the richest Black man in America.” Conveniently, Kim’s punchline was not included: “So, when I divorce him, you have to know it came down to just one thing: his personality!”

It is telling that on the eve of the release of the follow-up to his best-received effort in years, the public has turned to Netflix documentary jeen-yuhs — not West’s latest music — to remind them why they ever rooted for him in the first place. Footage of a young West trawling the Roc-A-Fella offices for an executive — any executive — who might rightfully recognize the genius of “All Falls Down” is endearing, but that good will was easily undone on Tuesday when West borught Manson onstage as “guess who’s going to jail tonight?” taunted listeners over the arena’s sound system.

To be sure, Tuesday’s show offered ample evidence that West can still pack fans into arenas and command the online cultural discourse. What’s more, the fans who attended Tuesday’s show doubled down on their support for The New Kanye, wearing merch from West’s post-Kardashian, post-MAGA era — Saint Pablo tour t-shirts and Free Larry Hoover hoodies were particularly popular.

As Manson paraded around the stage, a group of adolescent men clad in Kanye gear could be seen throwing back shots in the audience. By the time most concertgoers got in their Ubers, West was once again trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons.

Yet not even sound or technical mishaps could convince the die-hards to quit on West. The livestream was plagued by technical issues throughout the night, and the bass-heavy, muffled sound in the arena wasn’t much better. Exasperated by the sound issues, West finally threw his mic into the water in what became another viral moment from the night.

Days ago, the first chapter of jeen-yuhs reminded us why West’s singular voice was once so important. During the premiere of Donda 2, his tossed mic served as a reminder that West is no longer leading the cultural discourse with substance, but instead through ploys and gimmicks as volatile as a burning home.

One has to question when the fans in the stands, the journalists covering his every media manipulation, and the collaborators who show up for him will quit rubbernecking, grab a bucket, and put out the flames.

Setlist:
True Love
Broken Road
Too Easy
Fuck Flowers
Eazy
Security
Kid We Did It
Pablo
Mr. Miyagi
Diet Coke
Louis Bags
Paid to Talk
Sci-Fi
Selfish
Jesus Is King
Requiem Aeternam
Hurricane
Jail
Lift Me Up
Keep It Burning
City of Gods
Heaven and Hell
Praise God
First Time in a Long Time
Off the Grid

Plagued with Sound Issues, Kanye West’s Donda 2 Listening Event in Miami Was a Star-Studded Fiasco
Celia Almeida

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