Kanye West’s "Donda Album Experience" was nothing short of amazing. Kanye has been known for his innovation and creativity when it comes to live shows for years now, however his newest endeavor with these album listening parties have been different. This was my first Kanye show since his floating stage performance at the United Center during his “Life of Pablo” tour back in 2016, which at the time seemed crazy so I was excited about what he was going to pull off this time.

The entire stadium was completely packed, even getting there hours early wouldn't have saved you from having to sit in line with the hundreds of other ravenous Kanye fans waiting to get into the stadium. The first thing I noticed when entering the arena was the line for merch. About 2 hours before the show was set to begin there were hundreds of people waiting in line to buy “Donda” merchandise with nothing actually being displayed. People were getting knocked down left and right during the mad scramble for clothes that no one was sure were in the arena yet.

Regardless of that, the setup for Donda’s house looked amazing before the show even started. The house looked identical to the actual house that Kanye grew up in around the South Shore neighborhood in Chicago. It was replicated down to the small details such as dirty walls and missing tiles on the top of the house. The whole thing honestly felt like some sort of ritual was set to begin with the lit candles and black masked figures that would periodically walk on and off the platform. Kanye unfortunately came out almost 2 hours late but made up for it in spectacular fashion when the show began.

It started off with the “Donda Chant” which was R&B singer Syleena Johnson saying Donda’s name 102 times consecutively while Kanye emerged from out of the small white framed door of his childhood house looking like a villain from Batman. The entire arena went wild at this point with chants of “Kanye” echoing throughout Soldier Field. Then his dancers appeared dawning all black swat gear with a cavalry of trucks and other vehicles surrounding Donda’s house with dancing and somewhat bizarre movements. He followed up “Donda Chant” with his song “Jail” in which he made a big change, replacing Jay-Z’s verse with controversial rapper DaBaby who has been widely critized for his homophobic remarks at the Rolling Loud music fesitival in late July. During the song both DaBaby and fellow controversial figure Marilyn Manson emerged from Kanye’s childhood home surprising the entire crowd. I’m not sure about others but I wasn't even aware who those people were initially. I don’t think Kanye cared much about the recent controversy regarding these two artists, personally that's why I think he brought them both out first and together to show everyone he doesn’t care and will work with who he wants.

After that point, Kanye played multiple songs from the album while bringing out artists like Travis Scott, Don Tolliver, Westside Gunn, Shenseea, Rooga, and Larry Hoover Jr who are all featured. The best part of each song played was the anticipation of who would come out of the house next, it was honestly very exciting. My favorite song they played was “Praise God” with Baby Keem and Travis Scott. The energy in the building when Travis emerged from the house and appeared along with Kanye, dancing on the side of the house was amazing.

Towards the latter half of the show everything began to really get weird. At the end of the tracklist everyone went back inside the house with only Kanye left. He goes inside the house and emerges completely on fire walking around the stage like the human torch from the Fantastic 4. A few moments later a figure appeared dressed in an all white wedding dress. This person is rumoured to be his wife (or ex-wife) Kim Kardashian and she slowly approached Kanye. The two embraced and left the stage together almost as if they had just gotten married again. That was the end of the show and it was spectacular, it had the cinematics of a play, the energy of a concert, and the ending of a movie. The thing that I noticed while leaving the stadium with the thousands of others in attendance was the fact that he had accomplished so much and had everyone's attention without uttering a single word all night. Only Kanye could pull something off like this, and I honestly can’t wait to see what's next in his legendary career.