Kanye West has finally revealed the release date for his new album Donda.
The superstar rapper revealed in a Beats by Dre commercial, which aired during Tuesday’s NBA Finals, that his long-awaited follow-up to 2019’s Jesus is King drops this Friday, July 23.
West scored and edited the ad, which features U.S. track star Sha’Carri Richardson. The commercial also featured a snippet from “No Child Left Behind,” a new song from the album. In the advert, West can be heard singing, “He’s done miracles on me” as Richardson prepares to run.
Richardson, who is serving a one-month suspension after testing positive for marijuana at the U.S. Olympic trials last month, was not selected as a member of the Olympic 4×100 relay team, in a controversial decision earlier this month.
West will debut the upcoming album release – his 10th – at 8 p.m. Thursday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Tickets, priced at $20 and $50, went on sale Monday via Ticketmaster. About 40,000 to 50,000 tickets were expected to be available at the venue, which holds 71,000. According to the Beats by Dre commercial, the listening event will also be livestreamed on Apple Music.
Though West is long associated with Chicago, the mercurial rapper was born in Atlanta and retains ties to the city; there are also no capacity mandates for large gatherings in Georgia.
West named the album after his mother, Donda West, who died in 2007 at age 58. No other details about the album – which West initially announced on Twitter in July 2020 – have been announced as yet.
The album has been teased several times this year from people in West’s circle. The rapper’s manager Abou Thiam confirmed the arrival of Donda in the comments of a now-deleted Instagram post in June 2020 announcing the launch of West’s Yeezy Gap collaboration: “WestDayEver. Album OTW!,” he wrote.
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