"I want to tell the whole world about a friend of mine"
Kanye West loves himself enough for us all, but the love he has for his mother Donda West is unmatched. The star’s mom — who died from heart disease after plastic surgery a decade ago — raised him on her own in Chicago. Donda dedicated a huge part of her life to her only child and even wrote a book about raising the mogul, Raising Kanye: Life Lessons From the Mother of a Hip-Hop Superstar.
Kanye was never shy about being a “mama’s boy.” He loved his mom more publicly than DJ Khalid loves Asahd, and serenaded her often. On Yeezy’s Late Registration (and his mixtape Freshmen Adjustment), he dedicated “Hey Mama” to Donda West, professing just how proud she had made him.
When she died in Marina Del Ray in 2007, Kanye took the loss of his parent, for lack of a better word, hard. “If I had never moved to L.A. she’d be alive,” West said in an interview with Q magazine eight years after his mother’s passing. “I don’t want to go far into it because it will bring me to tears.” He went on to say that if he has sacrificed one thing in his life for his fame and fortune it would be his mom.
In 2016, Kanye infamously suffered a severe emotional breakdown alongside the anniversary of his mother’s death that year. The episode was followed by a year of radio silence from the rapper and questions from fans about whether the “Flashing Lights” star would come back.
When he finally did emerge from seclusion in November of this year, what did he find? Taylor Swift releasing her sixth studio album on the 10th anniversary of his mother’s death. While Swift’s reps insist that the dates were not connected, Yeezy fans weren’t so sure. To commemorate Donda West’s life, death, and son (and shame Taylor, of course), Kanye’s fans streamed “Hey Mama” on Spotify 700,000 times.

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