Kanye West’s eagerly anticipated 10th studio album Donda amassed over 60 million streams in the U.S. on Apple Music in the first 24 hours since its release Sunday morning, setting a 2021 record for the streaming service and becoming the third-highest total ever in that span.
Donda topped a record 152 countries on Apple Music’s album charts in its first 24 hours, while also occupying 19 of the top 20 spots on its Daily Top 100 Global songs chart. Meanwhile, over on Spotify, Donda earned more than 94 million worldwide streams, the second-most all-time for the streamer.
The surprise release of Donda was met with pushback from Kanye, who accused DaBaby’s manager Arnold Taylor of holding back “Jail, Pt. 2,” featuring a verse from the controversial rapper, from appearing on his latest album. West shared screenshots of a text exchange with his manager Abou “Bu” Thiam on Instagram where he refused to remove him from the song. “I’m not taking my brother off,” he wrote. “He was the only person who said he would vote for me in public.”
“Jail, Pt. 2” was eventually added to Donda, but West redirected his ire towards Universal Music Group, accusing the parent company of Def Jam of releasing the album without his approval, and blocking the DaBaby-assisted track.
According to Variety, sources close to UMG called West’s claims “preposterous.”
Soulja Boy accused West of removing his verse from “Remote Control,” while Chris Brown called Kanye a “whole hoe” on his Stories for allegedly pulling his verse from “New Again” before deleting the post.
In other news, an edited version of Kanye’s final Donda listening event will be made available to Apple Music on Tuesday, according to Billboard. The event took place at Chicago’s Soldier Field. Prior to that, Kanye held two listening events for the album at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
