Drake Album Covers In Order

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The Story Behind Drake's Album Cover For 'Certified Lover Boy'

I write about the crossover between high art and pop culture.

LONDON, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 04: Drake attends the "Top Boy" UK Premiere at Hackney Picturehouse on ... [+] September 04, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Mike Marsland/WireImage)

Mike Marsland/WireImage

Drake just dropped his latest album on September 3, Certified Lover Boy.

Many aspects of the album have caused chatter—it's a chart-topping release, it steals Kanye West's thunder for Donda and namely, its meme-worthy, party-ripe album art.

The album art for Certified Lover Boy, Drake's sixth album, depicts 12 pregnant women emojis, lined up wearing different colored shirts, holding their babies in their bellies. It has sparked a debate as one of the most controversial hip hop album art covers of all time.

The album cover for Drake's new album, Certified Lover Boy, by British artist Damien Hirst.

Damien Hirst/Ovo Sound

Hirst is a master of coveting controversy, though. He's no stranger to that. Ever since he saw his rise in the 1990s London art scene, thanks to a relationship with art collector Charles Saatchi, he shocked the pre-internet era with sharks in tanks of formaldehyde, to diamond-encrusted skulls and his famed Medicine Cabinet piece with shelves of colorful pharmaceuticals.

The 12 women holding their babies could tie into the fact that Drake's album was delayed by nine months. Some have criticized the cover for not having a red-haired woman represented in the piece.

But for Drake, who has an art collection that includes artists like Andy Warhol, KAWS and Takashi Murakami, this is just a piece of pop art for the meme-baited public, no less. Plain and simple.

Drake owns an artwork by Hirst—a print of his sculpture For the love of God, a 2007 piece, which is seen in Drake's condo in Toronto. The rapper is a fan of light artist James Turrell, and owns other pop artworks by British artists like Gary Hume and Gerald Laing. He also owns a hilarious neon light sculpture by artist Patrick Martinez, which reads: "Less Drake, More Tupac."

Drake's own taste in pop art, from his own art collection, shows why he chose Hirst to do his latest album cover. As Hirst once said about his art: "People are afraid of change, so you create a kind of belief for them through repetition. It's like breathing. I've always been drawn to series and pairs. A unique thing is quite a frightening object."

Artist Damien Hirst stands in front of one of his paintings during a media preview at the Gagosian ... [+] Gallery in New York January 11, 2012 as they present "The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011" by Hirst. The exhibition will take place at once across all of Gagosian Gallery's eleven locations in New York, London,Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong, opening worldwide on January 12, 2012. Most of the paintings are being lent by private individuals and public institutions, more than 150 different lenders from twenty countries. Conceived as a single exhibition in multiple locations, "The Complete Spot Paintings 1986– 2011" makes use of this demographic fact to determine the content of each exhibition according to locality. AFP PHOTO / TIMOTHY A. CLARY (Photo credit should read TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

Repetition is a common theme in Hirst's artworks, as the repetition of dots helped elevate the British artist into the first brand in the art world during pre-internet times. Hirst has created over 1000 spot paintings, from 1986 to 2011.

"To create that structure, to do those colors, and do nothing," the artist writes on his website. "I suddenly got what I wanted. It was just a way of pinning down the joy of color."

For Drake, the opposite could be true. In many ways, his music avoids repetition.

When he did an interview in 2010 about the music video for Best I Ever Had, Drake said something that rings true today: "When I read the comments, I was like, man, I guess no one wants to laugh anymore," he said. "Everybody wants the fairy tale, you know?"