Everyone’s favourite mentally ill musician, Kanye West (no judgement, it’s just a thing), has a new toy for budding artists to play with. The Donda Stem Player might look like a cross between an Ultimate Ears Roll 2 and a Fleshlight but it’s not a Bluetooth speaker — though we suppose you could use it as one, if you were really boring.
What does the Donda Stem Player do?
https://twitter.com/yevideo/status/1430543251442999299?
West’s new device, part of a partnership with tech company Kano (you’ll see the Yeezy Tech x Kano branding at the official website), is kind of like a Bluetooth speaker, in that it contains a 97dB speaker inside its slightly fleshy confines, but it’s designed to let you “customize any song”, according to its website. A couple of demos (like the one above) have turned up online and it comes across like a musical instrument designed to modify existing songs.
The official website says that the Donda Stem Players features:
- [the ability to] control vocals, drums, bass, and samples
- Isolate parts
- Add effects
- 4 channel lossless audio mixing
- Real-time loop and speed control
- Tactile effects
- Save, playback and share mixes
- Customise colours
Only it says it in all caps, because Kanye. Or Ye, at some point this year. The little device supports a range of file formats (.AIFF, .AIF, .FLAC, .M4A, .MP3, .WAV, .WAVE, .AAC, .ALAC, and .MP4), includes Bluetooth, haptics, a 3.5mm jack and is powered by USB-C and will set buyers back $200 (R3,000). The store won’t sell you more than three at a time.
Release is set for a vague ‘Summer 2021’, but it’ll supposedly launch when West’s new album, Donda, launches on 29 August. We’ll have to see if that actually happens. As weird a concept as this is, we can see the Donda Stem Player turning out some really interesting stuff — in the right hands. Not ours, obviously.
