That old saw about how you can’t go home again? Nobody told Kanye West, who has rebuilt his childhood dwelling — or at least the shell of it — for the upcoming Donda album listening party inside Soldier Field in Chicago. The rapper and Windy City native kept things more minimal for the previous two album previews at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, but for the upcoming event, it looks like he’s upping the game.
Billboard can confirm that the Thursday (Aug. 26) listening event will feature a replica of the home Yeezy grew up in the city’s South Shore neighborhood. The move comes just more than a year after Kanye reportedly bought the house his late mother, Donda West, first purchased back in the early 1980s and sold in 2004.
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And while the build seems unexpected, West appeared to telegraph it last week when the 44-year-old MC hit Instagram to share a photo of his childhood home after deleting all of his other social media posts. The captionless photo appeared ahead of his third large-scale preview of his upcoming 10th studio album, named after his mother, who died in 2007.
Since returning to Instagram in late July, West had shared numerous posts on the social media platform. The images included his makeshift bedroom inside Atlanta’s Mercedes Benz Stadium, where he held his first two Donda listening events and had been living while completing work on the album, as well as more recent posts of untitled artwork and moody images of his feet and one of his now-ubiquitous face masks. Donda has not been given an updated release date. The album was slated to arrive after both previous listening events, but never materialized on streaming services.
Check out images of the Soldier Field re-build below.
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Kanye is rebuilding his Chicago home in the stadium. pic.twitter.com/7G6OLuPeta
— West Sub Ever (@WestSubEver) August 23, 2021