On a purely musical level, “Donda” is close to unassailable any time spent tarrying on its release has been time well-wasted.

(In answer to the question, “What would Jesus do?,” we have a pretty clear answer: He’d suddenly rush his album out to beat the devil’s.) He returns just often enough to his late and beloved mother to almost plausibly claim concept-album status, but she has to share roughly equal space on his 2021 mantle of obsessions with Jesus, Kim Kardashian, himself and, naturally, Drake, who seems to be haunting our hero more than Satan ever could. What’s immediately clear is the inadequacy of the title to encapsulate West’s obsessions here. With the album clocking in at a length of one hour and 47 minutes, with no fewer than 27 songs (although the last four are effectively alternate-version bonus tracks), there’s a lot to digest here… admittedly more than can be adequately coughed up as a day-1 reaction. Unless he’s going to pull a “Life of Pablo” on us, it’s really done - no more tweaks and do-overs to put in front of a series of the largest focus groups of all time.

Yet here we have the miracle, a true, blue spectacle, of a finished “Donda,” the album that until this weekend seemed poised to challenge Guns N’ Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” as the most mythologically delayed major music release ever. “God’s not finished,” Kanye West sings repeatedly at the end of one of his new songs, “24.” Being made in God’s image, West very much relates to that he doesn’t like being done with things, either.

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