Kendrick Lamar "Damn" Album Cover

About

Kendrick Lamar Damn Album Cover refers to the use of American rapper and musician Kendrick Lamar's Damn album cover for parody or as a reaction image.

Origin

On April 11th, 2017, rapper Kendrick Lamar tweeted^[1] the cover artwork for his album Damn (shown below). The cover, featuring Lamar with his head down and eyes forward underneath the word "DAMN" in red serif typeface, received more than 162,000 retweets and 224,000 likes.

Within minutes of Lamar's tweet, Twitter user @KonyChimel^[2] tweeted a parody of cover, featuring professional wrestler Ron Simmons in his infamous "DAMN" shirt.

Spread

That day, Twitter user @TGTheTruth^[3] posted the album cover under the caption "When you look at your checking account after a long weekend of bad decisions." The tweet received more than 11,600 retweets and 12,900 likes.

Throughout the day, people used the album cover as a reaction image to various captions.

Others also photoshopped the image to parody the cover.

Designer's Reaction to Criticism

That day, the album cover's designer, Vlad Sepetov, responded to the reaction to the cover in a series of tweets.^[5] He said:

"Already seeing a lot of discussion about the cover and I’m really excited about it. It’s interesting to see people talk about ‘bad’ design but I’m incredibly proud of this cover. I sort of bucked a lot of what my teachers taught me. I wanted to make something loud and abrasive and maybe some won’t see that, but I’m glad that [Kendrick’s manager] Dave [Free] and Dot saw the value in making something that didn’t fit the mold. Just given the bare bones we fleshed something out that has a lot of people talking. It’s not uber political like TPAB [To Pimp A Butterfly] but it has energy IMO.”

News Media Coverage

Several news media outlets covered the album cover parodies, including Billboard,^[4] MTV,^[6] Complex,^[7] NME,^[8] and more.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References