Kanye West Shows Off “Banned” Album Cover On (Where Else?) Twitter

Amid last-minute preparations for his hotly anticipated My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West tweeted that the image he’d hoped to use as the album cover had been blocked or rejected. “Banned in the USA!!! They tried to play me fam! They don’t want me chilling on the couch with my phoenix!” he wrote. Click below to see the full-size illustration by George Condo and read the rest of West’s explanation of the controversial image. Should he fight to keep this as the cover?

West evidently felt that the image didn’t push any boundaries that hadn’t been breached before. “In the 70s album covers had actual nudity… It’s so funny that people forget that… Everything has been so commercialized now,” he tweeted, then took a short break before continuing: “In all honesty … I really don’t be thinking about Wal-Mart when I make my music or album covers… I wanna sell albums but not at the expense of my true creativity.”

We don’t imagine West will have much trouble finding new artwork (he could still run with the image that surfaced in connection with the premiere of his Runaway film, or ask Condo to come up with a new one — indeed, West tweeted a video showing that the artist was hard at work last night).

Will he really be content to greet all of this with a #Kanyeshrug? Or is it possible that he hopes that his tweets will prompt an outcry from fans?