upcoming release, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” unleashing songs
free to the Web, conceiving show-stopping television appearances and
prepping his first short film. Sometimes, as appeared to be the case
Monday, the artist’s unpredictability has even caught his label
off-guard, as the outspoken artist took to the Web and declared that
the artwork for his upcoming album had been rejected for the U.S.
market.
The artist has also been regularly baring his soul
on Twitter, offering his thoughts on rugs, women’s fashions, last
year’s MTV Video Music Awards fiasco with
the overuse of the term “LOL” and plenty, plenty, plenty more. On
Sunday, West utilized Twitter once more, declaring that his desired
album cover for “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” was “banned in the
Kanye wrote, “They don’t want me chilling on the
couch with my phoenix!” and revealed a piece of graphic artwork in
which a naked representation of the artist was in a sexually suggestive
position with the mythological firebird in female form. In a follow-up
tweet, West wrote, “In the ’70s album covers had actual nudity… It’s
so funny that people forget that … Everything has been so
commercialized now.”
A source familiar with West’s discussions with
Universal Music Group’s Island Def Jam on the cover art agreed to speak
solely on the condition of anonymity, proclaiming that he did “not want
to lose my job over this.” The source seemed to indicate that the
debate over the artwork was not one that was cut-and-dry. West was
strongly urged to use alternate art, the source conceded, but added
that West “was told if he wanted to do it, the label would stand behind
him.”
At issue, said the high-placed industry source, was whether or not mass-market retailers such as
would carry an album featuring venomous nudes, and one that would no
doubt inspire controversy. Though sales at mass merchants have been
declining in recent years, data from Nielsen SoundScan for the last two
years still had the likes of
A potential boycott from a major retailer would no
doubt have a massive impact on West’s album sales, especially during
the holiday season. “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” is currently
scheduled for a
retail reps were unavailable for comment on Sunday evening, follow-up
tweets from West seemed to indicate that concerns over retail
acceptance played some part in his refusal to alter his intended cover.
Wrote West, “In all honesty … I really don’t be thinking about
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