Kanye West Hoped for 'Fantasy' Cover Art Banning, Artist Reveals

Anyone who was puzzled by Kanye West's choice of cover art for his latest album -- a rather creepy, outsider art-style painting of a fanged, armless, winged female, naked and romantically entangled with a grotesque caricature of the rapper himself -- now has an explanation.

It seems the hip-hop megastar didn't actually intend for 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' to hit the shops clad in it all its disturbing, blackly humorous glory -- rather he hoped the sleeve image he commissioned from artist George Condo would see the disc censored.

According to the Guardian, Condo told the story behind his collaboration with West for an upcoming 'New Yorker' magazine profile. The artist -- who is this month the subject of a retrospective at New York's New Museum -- explained that the rapper initiated the working relationship after seeing his paintings, and approached him looking for "something that will be banned." Condo apparently spent a day in his studio with West, listening to the album, before creating eight or nine images for him to choose from, including the beastly tryst in question.

As it happened, West's latest bid for notoriety seemingly didn't come off as planned. Though the hip-hopper took to Twitter in October to announce his creation's impending blacklisting from major US stores, Walmart quickly denied planning any such thing.

Perhaps West might have had better luck with one of Condo's rejected efforts: an extreme closeup of the star with mismatched eyes and four sets of teeth, or a painting of his crowned head, decapitated, impaled by a sword and placed sideways on a wide slab.

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