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Artist News Releases
Whitney Houston estate “extremely disappointed” by Pusha T album cover, as rapper revives Drake beef
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 30 May 2018
The Whitney Houston estate has said that it is “extremely disappointed” by Kanye West’s decision to use a photograph of the late singer’s drug-strewn bathroom as the artwork for the new Pusha T album put out by his label, ‘Daytona’.
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, the estate said: “Even in Whitney’s death, we see that no one is exempt from the harsh realities of the world”.
The photograph was reportedly taken by a Houston family member in 2006 and subsequently appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer after her death in 2012 Pusha T says that West paid $85,000 to license the photo after a last minute artwork change.
“[West] changed my artwork last night at 1am”, Pusha T told radio host Angie Martinez in an interview ahead of the album release last week. “He wasn’t feeling it. The [original] artwork was pictures that we all agreed on. He picked the photographer, I took these pictures, I was like, ‘Yo, these are fresh’. I picked all of these pictures out, he had a little edit to it, how he wanted the actual grading of the picture to look. Picked the picture, great, we look, boom, boom, boom, it’s good”.
He went on: “At 1am, my phone rings. No caller ID. ‘Hey, yeah, I think we should change the artwork’. And, ‘I like this other artwork. And this other artwork is 85 grand’. I said, ‘Hey, I don’t want to pay for that, and I wasn’t even going to ask you to pay for that. We picked what we picked, it’s here, it’s ready’. [He said,] ‘No, this is what people need to see to go along with this music. Imma pay for that’. I say, ‘You my man! You my man!’ I love it, I actually do love it. [But] I absolutely did not want to pay for it”.
Meanwhile, Pusha T has been busying himself trying to get a rise out of Drake. A track on ‘Daytona’, called ‘Infrared’, includes lines referencing the ghostwriting controversy that blew up around Drake a couple of years ago.
In an interview with Vulture, Pusha T said that he was forced to respond to Drake after his rival “questioned my authenticity” on his track ‘Two Birds, One Stone’. He added that he plans to “deal in truths all summer long”.
He stayed true to his word by releasing a new track, ‘The Story Of Adidon’, yesterday, in which he claims that Drake has a secret son he refuses to acknowledge because the mother is a porn star. The artwork for the track is a controversial photo of Drake made up in blackface and wearing a Jim Crow t-shirt.
Photographer David Lewes has said that the 2008 photograph was Drake’s idea, and that it was “a strong statement made by a black man about the fucked up culture he is living in”.
