Entertainment
50 Cent Asks Fans To Help Him Pick Out Pop Smoke's Posthumous Album Cover After Virgil Abloh Posts-And-Deletes His Design Defense
By Ricki Mathers
Jul 1, 2020 10:10 PM
Source: Billboard
Pop Smoke was just starting to enjoy the fruits of is labor when the young rapper’s life was senselessly cut short in a Beverly Hills Mansion that happened to be owned by Teddi Mellencamp. 50 Cent promised to honor the late musician by executive producing his very first studio album.
While the release date for Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon has been pushed back, the album cover was revealed. 50 allowed Steven Victor to assign the album cover design to Off White genius Virgil Abloh.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCFNxopnouy/
This is why fans were both shocked and disappointed when they saw what Abloh came up with that was reminiscent of a Photoshop mixtape cover. The graphic started trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons.
Vigil briefly took to Instagram to offer some sort of an explanation behind his thought process: ‘This album cover was one of like 5 things we talked about. he mentioned his story felt like the metaphor of a rose & thorns growing from concrete of of his hood in Canarsie, Brooklyn. In your memory i just finished it yesterday. as evident of the whole idea, the t-shirt insinuates it’s mandatory we put an and to this cycle of violence that plagues us, we need to shoot for the moon & aim for the stars. as heavy as it is we are celebrating your life the whole way thru. rest in piece young one. -signed Louis Vee, Louis Vee.’
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCFpwsWHnbt/
Later on, a conceptual artist known as Ryder took to Instagram to slam Abloh for copying his designs which include the Pop Smoke cover art.
Luckily, there was some good that came from the drama. Many artists have come together online to share their version of what an honorable cover art would look like.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCG7qILnvX7/
50 Cent took to Instagram, after slamming Virgil’s design, to ask his fans to rate the images from 1 to 10.
Take a look at a few of the ideas. Which one do you think should replace the original design?