The most brutal moment from this latest round of Kanye West and Drake’s increasingly depressing feud just might be when, near the end of Certified Lover Boy, Drake raps, “Only look for sympathy inside my mother’s eyes.” The line isn’t meant to be another salvo in the ongoing battle between the two aging hip-hop mama’s boys, a spat in which both are trying and failing to use each other as cannon fodder in an effort to boost their own waning musical imaginations. But those words cut deep all the same. Because Drake can still look at his mom’s face in front of him and see her as a grounding force. Kanye cannot.

Neither can André 3000. Even though Kanye’s album is named after his late mother, the Donda sessions’ most meaningful maternal ode belongs to André. “Life of the Party,” which was apparently left off Donda because André didn’t think his verse would work if its curses were forcibly expunged, was leaked on Drake’s radio show over the weekend in another dumb attempt at a snipe. This move was especially bizarre because “Life of the Party” is more considered and more genuine than pretty much anything found on either Drake or Kanye’s new records. At the song’s heart is an instant-classic André verse where he vividly yearns for his late mom, trying to recapture her spirit through wishful pleas and replayed memories.

This isn’t the first time André, famous for being particularly empathetic to motherly plights, has paid tribute to his mother’s legacy in song. In 2018, on Mother’s Day, he released two jazzy tracks inspired by his parents’ passings earlier in the decade, including a 17-minute instrumental where he channeled unquenchable sorrow through the bleats of a bass clarinet. His “Life of the Party” appearance revisits the same emotional terrain, with a newfound sense of clarity; grief takes time.

Adhering to Donda’s theme better than Kanye himself, André sets up the verse as a series of messages to Ye’s late mother, using her as a conduit. He raps of searching for a sign—any sign—of his mom’s soul, whether it be in a baby’s laugh or a blade of grass, but also acknowledges that he’s “startin’ to believe ain’t no such thing as heaven’s trumpets.” Atop an Old Kanye sample flip, André starts to think back, conjuring as he goes. There were the times he would cough whenever his mom lit up a cigarette, trying to nudge her to quit; times when she would show Seven, his son with Erykah Badu, what it was like to lead a normal life. André’s mind then drifts to his dad, and he asks a series of searing questions most people wouldn’t dare say aloud: “Why he never married? Always smiled, but was he happy inside?/Because I carried my mother’s name, did he carry shame with him?” He’ll never know the answers.

There is a half-focused Kanye verse here, in which he takes more pointless shots at his rival. But coming after André, it only serves to remind us of where Kanye didn’t go on Donda—the depths he didn’t reach, the pathos he didn’t muster. The song ends with archived audio of another ghost, DMX, comforting one of his young daughters as they soar into the air on an amusement park ride. “Daddy’s right here,” he repeats, his growl suddenly as comforting as a pillow. “I told you I’m not gon’ let you go.”

Photo: Kanye West and André 3000 at the 2004 BET Music Awards. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)