When Kendrick Lamar shared the cover art for his highly-anticipated album DAMN. this week, it caused a flurry of confusion because it didn’t quite fit the mold of what consumers are used to seeing as “quality” cover art.
That was the absolute intention of one of the creators, Vlad Sepetov. He set to go against the grain of what his teachers taught him. “i wanted to make something loud and abrasive,” he explained in a series of tweets on Tuesday (April 11).
Sepetov has a lot to be proud about. He was one of the creative minds behind the artwork of Kendrick’s last album, To Pimp A Butterfly, which was set in a time where the black revolution saw a West Coast-style turn up on the White House lawn. The depiction set against a monochrome, black-and-white vintage Polaroid was artsy enough to spark discussions of meaning and how it went perfectly with the theme of Dot’s 2014 album.
DAMN. brings out a different emotion with the parental advisory sticker as a bold, prominent fixture.
This doesn’t mean that it was safe from becoming an amusing meme.
Regardless if the people are feeling the DAMN. artwork or not, the project drops on Friday (April 14) with features from U2, Rihanna and Zacari, while production is being handled by Teddy Walton, Mike WiLL Made-It, The Alchemist and 9th Wonder among others.
I’VE SEEN DOPE COVERS ON WACK ALBUMS LIKE TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY SO SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!
Ppl overreacting to album covers now? Thank God it’s Easter because Jesus needs to save a lot of ppl.
People are overreacting to everything Kendrick is doing. I seen a youtube video of some chick analyzing the track list. Who analyzes a track list?? lol/smh. People writing essays on Humble. This is what happens when you have 1 dope rapper in the mainstream. He gets all the spotlight. Unlike in the 90’s where there was maaaad talent and the spotlight was always spread out.
literally DAMN ! this shit had a graphic designer? i thought Kendrick put it together on MS Paint in like two minutes lmao, fuck outta here with your trash ass creative dogshit.
Lame ass design, no concept whatsoever. No principles of design. Crappy font choice. No color pallet. Fire him, he is lazy af
this cover is fucking dope. straight up reminds of odb in some way. its a solid cover, suits the persona.
Terrible cover… Terrible rap music
If it suck why waste your time commenting . Waste of a life
Hey, at least he’s not doing some shit like Wiz Khalifa did on ONIFC cover.
Wow HHDX lame af for deleting comments bunch of kendrick dick riders
Who gives a fuck about the album cover… 4 me it’ll be another coaster….. Along has he drop that heat… Like he been doin…. That’s all that matters…. Best lyricist in that game….. K.DOT
yeah it’s “Damn” alright.. as in “Damn dat is one ugly ass cover, son”
dope artwork. high end magazine vibe.
nobody reads magazines anymore
At first I thought it’s a play on TIME. It looks good, anyways.
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People tend tot judge quality based on sales, which is stupid. Joey dropped an really impressive album. That the majority of todays listeners don’t appreciate lyricism, that’s their problem.
Just don’t hate if someone does make an effort to keep lyricism in hiphop.
How can I paint this picture, when the colorblind is hanging with ya??
‘Loud and abrasive’ is a great way to describe the cover . . . feel those two words could define the sound of the album which would be great.
Lol nah. I’m hyped for this album, I’m sure it will be good. But this cover could be made by any amateur on 10 minutes.
A loud and abrasive cover would be something like 59 cents bulletproof.
This is just a guy standing in front of a brick wall with the first font that came on the program lol. But hey, album covers don’t mean shit. It’s all about the music. If the music is great, the image will be placed in rap history.
Oh, better example of an abrasive dope album cover is Dr Dres Chronic.
Good point
There’s a lot of things that make you say DAMN. Pretty sure the album will be, even if the cover makes you go, WTF ?
To Pimp A Butterfly came out in 2015 smh…not 2014.
and this “designer” didn’t even take the picture on the cover..
Possibly the wackest cover of all time. Compare this to Logic’s new album cover. Huge difference
Looks like K DOT just got done dumpster diving. Not a good look
He doesn’t need to defend it. Great 90s artwork.
For the people saying this is the worst/wackest cover of all time clearly haven’t seen some of the covers Pen & Pixel did.
nah those were the shit. had me looking at them like damn how they do this? you weren’t there I take it..
Who cares if I was “there” or not? I can still see them online and can say that some were terrible clusterfucks. Don’t let nostalgia blind you, man.
This is for sure a play on Trump’s TIME magazine cover. The M makes devil horns
…….eh no, it’s not.
To Pimp A Butterfly was out in 2015 you fucking idiots. Really shows what great HipHop “journalists” yall are and how much research is done. Smfh. Absolute dumbasses.
If your worried about the cover, which is tough, then your probably gay. Act like a fuckin man
If you think that cover is “tough” then your the gay one. Bang, as in bang a lotta dudes you flamer.
It isn’t wack it’s just incredibly lazy It’s just a very well taken photo and a font
Damn. grabbed my attention, dope cover. More life album cover art was horrible.
HE LOOKING EXACLY LIKE THE NAME OF THE COVER. DAMN I HAD TO TAKE THIS PICTURE. HURRY UP MAN. DAMN TAKE IT ALREADY
He can defend it all he wants, shit still looks like trash.
I don’t care about the cover, as long as it’s good music. What ever happened to don’t judge a book by its cover? I still purchase cds, but once that’s in my car I ain’t gonna look at the cover, I like reading the production notes on the tracks. Not looking at pictures.
It looks more like a magazine cover than an album cover.
I never in my life paid attention to cover art back when I was actually buying physical copies. Back in the 90s, I always opened the CD and went straight to the liner notes to see the production credits and features. Back then, we didn’t know the tracklisting until we got the album. Whenever I saw songs produced by DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Pro, Lord Finesse, Da Beatminerz, Dr Dre, Easy Mo, Showbiz, KRS…..I always flipped the fuck out and skipped straight to those tracks.
Same here. I miss those days
There’s nothing to defend. Simple can be better
umm more like uninspiring and boring.
The album cover is actually great. Those who want to stick to the book on how an album cover should be made lack originality . The whole aspect of getting a negative comment or good comment on the album cover was the point. Breaking away from the usually yet remaining relative and attention grabbing. Did you listen to the album? It’s great . Vlad did a great job and K-dot iceed this album