Pop Smoke's Manager Agrees To Change Album Artwork Following Backlash

Source: Claudio Lavenia / Getty

Pop Smoke’s team did a quick 180 after releasing the album artwork for his upcoming posthumous album.

The rapper’s debut studio album is set to release on Friday, July 3. In anticipation for the drop, the official artwork for the album was shared by Steven Victor, the head of the Victor Victor label imprint, who worked closely with Pop Smoke before he was killed on February 19. According to Victor, none other than Virgil Abloh “designed the album cover and led creative” as per Smoke’s wishes while he was alive.

While Abloh is hugely successful in the fashion world, he isn’t exactly known for putting a lot of effort into his designs. Still, once the artwork for Pop Smoke’s upcoming album hit the internet, fans called for it to be redone (by someone other than Virgil) immediately.

It doesn’t take a Photoshop guru to realize that this design probably took a good 20 minutes, with many people pointing out that Virgil literally picked the first result in Google images to work with. With so many young, talented graphic designers in the world and easily accessible via the internet, a lot of people saw this artwork as a slap in the face, further cementing the fact that people like Virgil will continue to be successful because of their connections–not because of their talent.

After seeing that sorry excuse for an album cover, the jokes truly wrote themselves, with some fans taking a shot at designing their own cover instead.

Luckily, Steven Victor saw all of the conversation surrounding Pop Smoke’s cover and announced in a series of tweets that the team would be making some changes.

“H E A R D Y O U B R B,” Victor tweeted. “MAKING A CHANGE. POP WOULD LISTEN TO HIS FANS.”

With so many fans posting their take on an album cover in response to Virgil’s travesty, it would be dope to see his team pick one of them to use as the final product.