The Atonement of Kanye West What happened at the DONDA Release Party

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.

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.