Many music fans are excited that Kendrick Lamar and TDE are overseeing the Black Panther soundtrack. Given that Kendrick released one of the best albums of 2017 and is widely regarded as a musical genius, TDE stans and fans of the Black Panther story alike are eager to see what he curates. His “All The Stars” collaboration with SZA was a great harbinger already. One person however who’s a little agitated at Lamar’s curatory efforts is Lupe Fiasco. The legendary lyricist took to Twitter with since-deleted tweets letting people know that he feels the cover art for “All The Stars” is similar to the cover of his upcoming Drogas Wave album — and that he senses a pattern of Kendrick following in his artistic footsteps.
“Even I admit this is a little too close for comfort…damn now I guess I need a new album cover,” Fiasco tweeted with a sad emoji. He also tweeted, “‘no matter how far you go…you will reflect me'” before alluding to Kendrick borrowing the inspiration for his original Untitled album cover from Lupe’s Food And Liquor II cover, which is also a solid black design. Lupe found further similarities in the “backwards album” concepts that Tetsuo & Youth and DAMN. shared.
The covers for “All The Stars” and Drogas Wave do have some resemblance. Both covers have circular shapes in the midst of blackness, though “All The Stars” depicts faraway stars and Lupe’s design appears to depict cocaine. Though Lupe said he was going to change his cover at first, he changed his mind and stated in another deleted tweet that, “we gone keep it because I made it and it’s dope but I want everybody to mark the date so that y’all don’t retroactively accuse of biting K-Dots album art when Wave drops…ok?”
We won’t. We’ll just accept that great minds do indeed think alike.
