In late August 2021, Kanye West released his 10th studio album Donda, named after his late mother Donda West. The second song on the track list for Donda was “Jail,” the first collaboration between West and Jay-Z in over half a decade.
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During the song, Jay-Z raps the lyric this might be the return of The Throne, alluding to he and West’s show-stopping 2011 collaborative album Watch The Throne. However, in newly uncovered footage from the album-making process for Donda, the public learned that West almost had Jay-Z’s appearance removed entirely from the LP before its release.
On Wednesday (June 7), West fans found a video posted to Vimeo by a user named Disruptor. Lasting five minutes, the video shows never-before-seen footage from recording sessions for Donda, where viewers can see West, alongside icons like Rick Rubin, Mike Dean, Pusha T, and Playboi Carti, crafting Donda songs like the title track, “Jail,” “Off The Grid,” and “Junya.”
Towards the end of the video, we see West on a phone call saying that anybody who is featured on the album that is not in attendance for the Donda listening party in Chicago’s Soldier Field on August 27, 2021, would be taken off the album.
“Everybody that’s not here, I’m taking their verses off,” West shouted into his phone. “I’m taking Jay-Z ‘s verse, I’m taking — if there’s anybody not here on the porch with me, they’re not on this version.”
While making Donda, West hosted multiple different listening parties in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz stadium, as well as Chicago. Each new event would see West play a newly tweaked version of the Donda track list. The August 27 performance in Chi-town would happen to be the last listening party before the LP dropped two days later. And, although only rappers like Westside Gunn, Don Toliver, DaBaby and Travis Scott made appearances, as well as polarizing rockstar Marilyn Manson, feature verses from Roddy Ricch, Lil Durk, Lil Yachty, Jay-Z, and more stayed intact.
But, while Jay-Z’s version of “Jail” landed on the final track list for Donda, West did add a remix of the song to the end of the LP titled “Jail Pt. 2,” where Jay-Z’s verse is removed and replaced by contributions from DaBaby and Manson. It’s unclear why West decided to do this, but with the new clip of his now-famous phone call adding context, it would not be surprising if spite played a role in “Jail Pt. 2″‘s inclusion on the album.
Shortly after Disruptor’s video went viral on Vimeo, it would end up being removed from the site and re-uploaded by a user named BRND on YouTube. Check out the full mini-documentary below.
Photo by Rachpoot/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
