This is easily the most difficult article that I have ever had to write. To put into words the mix of anger, sadness, emptiness, and self-pity that I’ve felt every week for the past this month is near impossible. Somehow, this weekly, seemingly perpetual nightmare all started with a Kim Kardashian tweet. On August 29, 2019, the wife of Kanye West teased a new Kanye album titled Jesus Is King. Her tweet, which has haunted me for the past two months, included the supposed track list for the album, as well as the release date: September 27th.  As my Instagram explore page was flooded with speculation about this upcoming Kanye West gospel album, I couldn’t help but get excited, even though my gut told me that, given Kanye’s impulsiveness and past releases, Jesus Is King was never going to drop.

If you’re not aware of the typical album dropping process, it is normally a simple 3-step process. Step 1 is the announcement, which is either done by the artist personally or the artist’s record label. In this case, it was Kanye’s wife who announced the album. This was the first red flag, as one of Kanye’s earlier, later-scrapped albums, “Yandhi”, was announced twice by Kim on Twitter. However, Kanye later confirmed the album release at one of his “Sunday Service” concerts, a series of performances including gospel covers of his songs. Step 2 is the buildup. With a Kanye album, there will be huge marketing rollouts, singles dropped, billboards put up, teasers leaked, everything to build up hype for the album. But, outside of the weekly “Sunday Service” concerts, there was pretty much nothing indicating an album release. This was a huge cause for concern there that I foolishly ignored. Step 3 is the release. This is where it all comes together at midnight Thursday night/Friday morning. However, sometimes an album will be delayed a few hours (or months in the case of Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red) due to an uncleared sample or something of the sort.

Accordingly, as the clock hit midnight and September 26th turned to September 27th, I rushed to open Spotify. I searched “Kanye West”. Under his artist profile, I clicked on “Albums”. Nothing new. I refreshed. Nothing new. I refreshed again. Nothing new. I did this for 15 minutes, fulfilling Einstein’s definition of insanity to the fullest. I was disappointed, but not exactly surprised. I simply had no faith in Kanye anymore, which is ironic considering this album was supposed to be all about his faith. Just days later, Kim followed up on Twitter, posting another updated track list, captioned “Have Faith.” I took her advice. For the past 4 weeks, I’ve done the same thing. Every Thursday night, I get back from my JV football game, start working on my homework, and check to see if Kanye dropped his album. And every single time, he disappoints me. It hurts for me to give a 1-star review to Kanye West, because, when the album drops, I believe it will be incredible. So this 1 star review goes not to Kanye, but to his torturous album release schedule and the constant disappointment brought on by it.

EDIT: Kanye has now recently announced that Jesus Is King will drop on October 25th. Even if this is true, the damage has been done. He still gets the 1 Star Review.