![]() ![]() But at any Kanye event, regardless of the city, everyone just dresses like, well, Kanye. Usually when you go to a concert in a city, local fashion sensibilities are evident. Walking around a Donda event is a funny experience, because it feels completely removed from the city it happens to be taking place in. And some of them didn’t even wait to leave the stadium before marking up the prices and reselling them online. As soon as the gates opened, people sprinted across the stadium and stood in long lines, buying armfuls of shirts, hoodies, foams, and slides. In addition to an array of Donda 2-specific merch, there were also pieces from the much-hyped “Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga” collection. This time, there was a lot to choose from. If you spend any amount of time at these things, you’ll notice there’s a large portion of people who show up with the sole intention of purchasing (and sometimes flipping) Kanye’s coveted merch. But besides him, people weren’t really discussing the music. One teenager at the front of the line excitedly read from a Reddit page on his phone, relaying leaked information about the night’s performance to anyone who would listen. That’s just not how these events work, and everyone knew it by now. ![]() As far as I could tell, everyone seemed resigned to the fact that the event would start much later than advertised, and the album likely wouldn’t be dropping at the end of the night. ![]() Everywhere I looked, people wore merch from previous listening sessions (plus a lot of “Free Larry Hoover” hoodies from Kanye’s recent concert with Drake). To her left, a teenager reminisced about taking a train to Chicago for the final Donda event. A middle-aged woman wearing a dad hat with the College Dropout bear on it talked about ditching work to fly to Atlanta last year. After a series of listening sessions for Kanye’s 2021 album Donda last summer, he had arrived in Florida for another event that would kick off the rollout for the sequel: Donda 2.Īs I waited in line at the front gate, people shared war stories from past events. People carried themselves like they’d been here before-because they had. When I showed up to LoanDepot Park in Miami on Tuesday afternoon, there was much less uncertainty among the early arrivers. Most of us assumed the album was going to drop right after the listening session, and no one could have guessed Kanye was about to literally move into the bowels of the stadium. I remember walking into the stadium, unsure whether it would be an actual concert or if he would just play songs and walk around aimlessly (it was the latter). Back then, no one knew what to expect (even Kanye himself). With only a few days’ notice after impromptu fliers hit Instagram, Kanye fans book tickets, flights, and hotels, and make their way to the next Donda event.Įxactly seven months ago, the first stadium Donda listening event took place in Atlanta, which I attended. It’s like the hypebeast version of Deadheads in the ’70s who followed the Grateful Dead on world tours, from one city to the next-except Kanye’s events aren’t planned out that far in advance. Kanye-obsessed diehards are making pilgrimages to each of the cities he sets up camp in-first Atlanta, then Chicago, and now Miami. If you’re searching for a true water cooler moment in 2022, look no further than these Donda listening events (whether you love them or hate them).Įach Donda event is livestreamed for millions of people at home, but if you don’t actually attend them in person, you’re missing out on the most fascinating and bizarre part of it all: a community is starting to take shape. In an era when we’re all listening to different songs on different playlists at different times, Kanye is creating must-see TV. Either way, everyone tunes in simultaneously and offers opinions, which is exactly the point. Some people watch in admiration others gawk in disgust. Without fail, the music world stops and pays attention each time. Sometimes Kanye West will share these announcements himself, and sometimes he’ll have someone else post them for him (thanks, Justin LaBoy). Every so often, without warning, a flier for a new “Donda experience” will surface on the internet.
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