Pusha-T on 'Daytona': Kanye West paid $85K for Whitney Houston bathroom photo on album

Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images; Jewel Samad | AFP | Getty Images

By Amy Kuperinsky | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Pusha-T's new album "Daytona" is awash in critical acclaim, but the seven-track album, released on Friday, also drew attention for another reason — the album cover.

After a change the rapper (pictured in the photo at left) said was made by Kanye West, his producer, collaborator and label boss, just a day before the album's release, a 2006 tabloid photo of a bathroom used by Whitney Houston was splashed across the album.

The photo, which West shared in a tweet on Thursday before the album's release, is an edited version of a picture published by the National Enquirer that appears to show drugs and drug paraphernalia strewn across a bathroom counter in Houston's Atlanta home.

Pusha says West insisted on using the photo, personally footing an $85,000 bill to license the picture for the album.

The decision to use the photo, published in the National Enquirer in 2006, six years before Houston's death, was a last-minute move, according to Pusha-T, who shared the story of the album art after alluding to working with the volatile West on the album. (Pusha is signed to West's G.O.O.D. Music and president of the label.)

"He changed my artwork last night at 1 a.m.," Pusha, 41, told Angie Martinez on Thursday.

Why?

"'Cause he wasn't feeling it," he said, even after West had a hand in choosing the previous artwork. Pusha went on to say the new image cost "85 grand."

Pusha said he told West, 40, that he wasn't going to pay the license fee, but West defended his last-minute switch.

"'No, this is what people need to see to go along with this music,'" he says West told him. "'I'mma pay for that.'"

Despite the last-minute change, Pusha went on to say that he loves the new album cover.

"What type of artwork costs 85 grand?" Martinez asked.

"Umm, it's a picture," Pusha said, adding that the $85,000 was paid to license the image worldwide.

The title of the album had also been changed to "Daytona" from "King Push," but that didn't draw controversy. The selection of the tabloid photo, however, caused some raised eyebrows ahead of the album's Friday release.

Controversy

Before the album was widely lauded for its actual music on Friday, some tweeted their criticism of West's decision to use the image.

When it was originally published, the Enquirer purported to show a scene from Houston's bathroom that included "a crack pipe and cocaine-encrusted spoons."

Houston's 2012 death in a hotel bathroom, at the age of 48, was ruled an accidental drowning with heart disease and cocaine use listed as contributing factors. For years, the music icon, a Newark native, had struggled with drug addiction.

Some questioned whether or not the image was exploiting Houston, while others had no doubt.

But for others, the use of the image only further piqued their curiosity, making them even more eager to devour the album, which had generated an early buzz before its overwhelmingly positive reception by critics.

West, of course, has been the subject of controversy himself, from his recent statements in support of President Donald Trump and what he has called "free thought" to his May 1 comments on "TMZ Live" in which he said slavery sounded like "a choice."

Pusha, who has advocated for prison reform, told Martinez and others that he does not agree with West politically and holds views that are completely opposed to West's statements. He said he usually avoids talking about politics with West.

"I feel like he's going to address so much of this on his album," Pusha told Ebro Darden Thursday on Hot 97's "Ebro in the Morning."

West's album, possibly titled "Love Everyone," is due out on June 1. He previously said he would use another attention-getting image on the album cover — a photo of Jan Adams, the plastic surgeon who operated on his mother, Donda West, before she died in 2007 due to complications after the operation.

West announced the album art by tweeting a text message exchange that included a photo of Adams.

"I want to forgive and stop hating," he said in the exchange. Adams wrote an open letter to West asking that he not use the photo on his album.

"This is amazing," said West, sharing the letter on Twitter. "Thank you so much for this connection brother. I can't wait to sit with you and start healing."

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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.