Kanye West Honors His Late Mother’s Birthday With A New Song, ‘Donda’

Kanye West is in the midst of a flurry of activity, from announcing a presidential campaign to signing a huge Gap partnership deal to dropping new music. He continued this prolific stretch last night by sharing more new music: In honor of what would have been his late mother’s 71st birthday this weekend, he released a song named after her, “Donda.”

He shared the track as a video on Twitter, and it features mostly vintage video footage, including a clip of a younger Kanye rapping in a kitchen with his mother by his side. The song begins with Donda reading lyrics from KRS-One’s “Sound Of Da Police,” and later, Kanye raps of needing his mother, saying, “Momma, I need you to tuck me in / I done made some mistakes and they rubbed it in.”

The track samples The Clark Sisters’ 1980 song “They Were Overcome By The Word.” Fans have speculated that the voice that offers a background “uh” towards the end of the video is Kendrick Lamar, or perhaps Consequence or Conway The Machine.

Kanye wrote in the tweet sharing the video, “In loving memory of my incredible mother on her birthday. My mom reciting KRS1 lyrics. This song is called DONDA.” Donda died at the age of 58 in 2007, due to post-surgery complications. Kim Kardashian also shared a longer version of the clip of Kanye and his mother rapping “Hey Mama.”

Listen to “Donda” above.