US rapper and record producer Kanye West, dubbed as among the most influential pop stars of the 21st century, returns to the top of the album charts in historic fashion again this week.
Released off-cycle on Aug. 29, Donda is the biggest album debut of 2021, racking up over 520,000 equivalent units globally in its first week of streaming. The record has accumulated over 775 million global streams; over 442 Million at Spotify, and 242 Million at Apple Music worldwide.
Donda is a global phenomenon, topping the album charts in eleven countries. West returns to #1 in the US, the UK, and Australia with his biggest career streaming numbers to date, and sees his first career #1 debuts in France, Italy and Sweden. Donda set an Apple Music all-time record at #1 in 152 countries.
Donda was previewed at three historic livestreamed listening events – at Atlanta’s Mercedes Benz Stadium and Chicago’s Soldier Field – each of which successively broke Apple Music’s global records for livestream audience.
“For the last few years, Kanye West — perhaps tired of the insufficiency of the album, or music-making in general — has been seeking increasingly grand canvases for his various projects… New music may have been the raison d’être for these events, but it is not his sole goal… the version of Donda played at each event has been different — and West’s refining of it in public is his true artistic project now. It is an ideal strategy for West, still among the most influential pop stars of the 21st century, an artist who is almost incalculably popular and yet almost wholly removed from the pop music mainstream,” New York Times said of the new album.