Cover Art of the Week #28: Graduation, Kanye West

Kanye West’s embarrassing gaffes on live national television and reputation for being pretty self-centred are seemingly eclipsing his artistic talent. He is in fact the top rapper-producer in the industry and a somewhat underrated visionary who throws creative curveballs. Case in point? His 2007 album Graduation and commissioning Takashi Murakami to completely reinvent his trademark bruin.

The first two albums of his planned tetralogy The College Dropout and Late Registration featured a guy-in-a-bear-suit looking downtrodden and dwarfed, respectively. By the time Graduation was set for release, Kanye was no longer the lame team mascot jumping around at half-time: he was now the superstar, the Most Valued Player in hip-hop. And his alter-ego needed to experience a similar metamorphosis.

Enter Murakami, cult pop artist and designer. A pioneer of the “Superflat” graphic style that borrows heavily from anime and manga aesthetics, Murakami took Kanye’s idea of “graduating” – global success, critical acknowledgement – and literally propels him into the stratosphere with a host of earnest supporters cheering him on in the background. Wide-eyed and unsmiling, he is catapulted into space without knowing how long he’ll stay up. A fitting image, alas, in light of his slipping popularity over the past three years.

But the public loves a great comeback. His new album A Good Ass Job, the last installment of the education-themed series, is due to drop later this year. We have a feeling that he’ll deliver. He’ll blow us away again, and we’re waiting in eager anticipation!

To find out more about Takashi Murakami, visit Kaikai Kiki, his art production company. To dive into Kanye’s stunning discography go to our Kanye West AUPEO! Artist Station and then find him together with even more hip-hop hits in our New School AUPEO! Station, available to all our Premium users!