Kanye West Paid $85,000 to Use a Photo of Whitney Houston’s Bathroom as Pusha T’s Album Cover
On Wednesday (May 23),Pusha Tfired a flurry of tweetsregarding his hotly anticipated album Daytona — formerly known as King Push — and how this project was strictly for his "family." The seven-track album, which features Kanye West and Rick Ross, has once again encountered another alteration: a new album cover.
In an interview with Angie Martinez earlier this week, Pusha explained how Kanye called him late Tuesday night and requested that he change the album cover. "[Kanye West] changed my artwork last night at 1 a.m. because he wasn't feelin' it," he says. Later, Pusha goes on to explain how Kanye originally enlisted a photographer to handle the cover art but later had a change of heart. "The [original] artwork was pictures that we all agreed on," explains Pusha. "He picked this photographer, we took these pictures […] We picked the pictures. Great. We love it. Everything is good."
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Steadfast on changing Pusha's album cover, West offered a pricier alternative. He cajoled his G.O.O.D. Music cohort into changing the album cover and later paid $85,000 — out of his own pocket — to use a 2006 photo of Whitney Houston's bathroom, according to Hip-Hop-N-More . The ominous flick displays drugs scattered all throughout the bathroom and spraypainted figures gracing the desecrated walls. In a 2013 memoir titled Remembering Whitney , Houston's mom re-enacted the time she walked into her daughter's bathroom mortified by what she had just seen.
"They were evil eyes, staring out like a threat. And in another room, there was a big, framed photo of Nippy [Whitney's nickname], Bobby [Brown] and Krissi [daughter Bobbi Kristina}, but someone had cut Nippy's head right out of it." Take a look at the photo below. Also, you can check out Pusha's interview with Angie below. Daytona drops Friday. Billboard reached out to Pusha's reps for comment.
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