The Best Music of 2021: Pitchfork Readers’ Poll Results

The reasons it’s his best received albums go beyond the music as well. His fan base were desperate for it to be good given that his last few have been really weak going off the standards of his best work earlier in his career. And you can debate endlessly about whether a rollout contributes to the quality of an album (I don’t think it can) but Donda was really well marketed and made people decide the album was great before it was out (obv you could get an impression of the album from the listening parties but the narrative that it was a return to form for Kanye had already formed before the album was out, which is silly considering the version that eventually got released - without his permission - was neutered).

/r/indieheads Thread Parent Link - pitchfork.com