Birds of a feather flock together, and toxicity works the same way. Earlier today, Kanye West announced his DONDA 2 album will be executive produced by Future, ensuring a fusion of two of the most publicly toxic rappers of the last few years.
On his Instagram page, West revealed the sequel to his Grammy Award-nominated 2021 album will arrive on February 22, 2022. The post features a picture of his childhood home burning, which seems appropriate — a Kanye West album executive produced by Future will surely break up a few family homes in the process. As is par the course for a Ye album, no additional details were shared by the enigmatic musician, but we’ve heard rumblings about DONDA 2 since we entered 2022.
On the third day of the year, Steven Victor, Senior Vice President of A&R at Universal Music Group, became the first to confirm the news, telling Complex, “Ye has started working on his new masterpiece DONDA 2.” Eight days later, rapper The Game posted a photo on his Instagram page of West in the studio with himself, Moneybagg Yo, and Antonio Brown (just days after Brown made a dramatic shirtless exit from a still-in-progress Tampa Bay Buccaneers game and was subsequently cut from the team). It wasn’t until Moneybagg Yo publicly shared a text message conversation with West that we got the first confirmation from Ye himself that he was working on DONDA 2, with a possible collaboration between Memphis lyricist and West entitled “Cold World.” West ended the text message conversation by writing, “Money in front of us, bullshit behind us,” which is the type of stance you expect from a billionaire who is rich (and toxic) enough to move next door to his estranged wife no matter where she goes.
The news of DONDA 2’s arrival comes 11 days after West released “Eazy,” his first new song of the year, that may possibly be a look into what we can expect from his new album. His verse on the dark Game-assisted track is essentially West absolving himself for all the controversy we’ve seen him embroiled in over the past year. He dismisses counseling, claims he and Kim Kardashian are “having the best divorce ever,” promotes his parenting prowess, and infamously threatens to “beat Pete Davidson’s ass.” It’s one thing to implicitly demean your wife’s parenting skills by claiming “the cameras watch the kids, stop taking the credit;” it’s stupefyingly reprehensible to do it on a song with a rapper who graphically rapped about having sex with your wife. But, it does explain the distorted mind state you have to be in to want your next album executive produced by a man who is not only the epitome of but also proudly embraces toxic masculinity.
Future and West have done enough to earn the title of toxicity twins. West publicly denouncing his estranged wife’s new partner mirrors Future disrespecting Russell Wilson. Wilson is the husband of Future’s ex-fiancee Ciara; during an Apple Music’s Beats 1 radio appearance, the rapper claimed Wilson was not being a man in the relationship by instructing Ciara to not speak about Future publicly. Future’s behavior airing out private details of his ex Lori Harvey allegedly begging him not to leave her and calling her new boyfriend (Michael B. Jordan) “a lame” is the same as West disparagingly saying he had to take 30 showers after dating his ex Amber Rose and before dating Kim. Future has treated his girlfriends as trophies, once stating on a video taken by Young Thug “you identify my bitches with [Audemars Piguet watches],” while Ye has been galavanting around the globe parading Julia Fox as more of an art project he’s developing than a girlfriend he’s dating.
On “Eazy,” West answers the question of whether or not he wants to let God win by stating “tonight, I guess I’ll let my pride win.” If Future has it his way, DONDA 2 will be a collection of those prideful nights that never look good the following morning.
