Chris Brown has been removed from Kanye West’s Donda album.
Kanye West dropped an updated version of the LP that no longer features Chris Brown. The polarizing singer’s vocals were taken off the song “New Again” in one of the many alterations to Donda.
The removal of Chris Brown’s vocals comes about a month after he lashed out at Kanye West on social media. Following the original release of Donda, Brown was seemingly upset to discover a verse he recorded for “New Again” wasn’t included.
“Kanye a whole hoe,” he wrote on Instagram.
.@chrisbrown via Instagram pic.twitter.com/Z2ER3R7Rto
— best of breezy. (@BestOfBreezyyy) August 29, 2021
A few days later, Kanye West’s manager Abou “Bu” Thiam spoke to TMZ about Chris Brown’s comment.
“It wasn’t intentional, but Ye is a producer, so his job is to find the best parts in the music and add it to his creative process,” Thiam said. “He reached out to Chris. Chris is a very passionate artist, but it’ll get figured it out. It’s just creatives having their beefs and s### like that. But it’s all good. Chris is family to us.”
In the aftermath, Chris Brown ended up leaking a reference mix of the verse he did for “New Again.” While the album cut simply featured him on the chorus, the reference audio had almost an entire minute of him singing.
Now, Chris Brown has been entirely removed from Donda, but he wasn’t the only person to get the boot from the LP. Kenyan artist KayCyy was also taken off the song “Keep My Spirit Alive.”
The reworked version of “Keep My Spirit Alive” replaces KayCyy’s hook with Kanye’s own rendition. Additional minor changes have been made throughout the album.
Kanye West dropped Donda on August 29 after multiple delays. As of September 28, both the original and updated versions of the LP can be heard on Apple Music.