No Kanye, you actually can’t do whatever you want. Kanye West has managed to turn being a complete ass into an unstoppable publicity vehicle for his latest album, answering Taylor Swift’s ode to the infamous VMAs incident with a masturbatory performance of his latest single “Runaway” at this year’s VMA awards show. (In case you forgot, that’s the song that screams “Let’s have a toast to the assholes.”) But now, Kanye’s getting a resounding “no” after submitting the artwork for his next album’s cover and he’s not taking it so well.
The image he proposed is a crude painting of a stark-naked woman with wings, a tail, and possibly fangs straddling an equally naked Kanye with devilish eyes and a beer in hand. Tres classy. But then again, his album is titled My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, so I guess the image is fitting. After receiving the rejection, Kanye indulged his most recent technological addiction and took to the Twitter-verse to share his disappointment in his label, first sending out an image of the proposed cover and complaining, “Banned in the USA!!! They don’t want me chilling on the couch with my phoenix!” Oh is that what that is? Guys, he and that girl (thing) are just watching a Dexter marathon on a lazy Sunday afternoon, get your minds out of the gutter!
But in typical Kanye fashion, just one tweet wasn’t enough. He tweeted about the rejection for the five hours following the big news, with a couple of real gems coming out of his web rant.
“In the 70s album covers had actual nudity…It’s so funny that people forget that…Everything has been so commercialized now.” Really, Kanye? You do know that you are one of the highest grossing artists around and that your shock-and-awe narcissism is a big reason why you are so successful in the commercial market, right? Trust me, nobody forgot about the 70s and the only reason you’re allowed to behave the way you do and still have a career is because of your commercial success, so please shut up.
But he didn’t stop there. “So Nirvana can have a naked human being on the cover but I can’t have a PAINTING of a monster with no arms and a polka dot tail and wings?” Alright, let me just try to unpack this. I’m assuming that by Nirvana’s “naked human” you’re referring to the swimming BABY on the cover of Nevermind. Sure, a naked baby is totally just as bad as a bestial depiction of you screwing some sort of half monster-half human with super pointy red nipples, especially since it’s not an actual photo. Yup, totally the same thing. Not.
After Kanye’s reaction, the L.A. Times spoke to a representative from Def Jam Records who said that though Kanye was strongly urged to find other art, they told him if he insisted on using it, they would support him. Well I don’t know what to believe anymore. It’s probably all part of the plan. They tell Kanye he can’t do something because it won’t sell, so he takes to the internet to loudly complain and make a fuss, and boom, he sells tons of records and rakes in the dough. Lucky bastard.
Source: LA Times
