Drake's album cover for Certified Lover Boy is confusing the heck out of fans
Drake just revealed what appears to be the Damien Hirst-designed cover art for his soon-to-drop album Certified Lover Boy — and it's effectively just one emoji repeated twelve times over in different colour schemes.
"CERTIFIED LOVER BOY SEPTEMBER 3," reads the caption of an Instagram post shared by Champagne Papi on Monday morning, confirming the highly-anticipated record's release date for the first time since he "hacked" SportsCenter with a cryptic promo on Friday.
The image shows Unicode's Pregnant Woman emoji, as displayed on Apple devices, twelve times: Three horizontal rows all containing four emojis per.
Each woman has a different shirt colour and their skin tones vary to represent the five options available on iPhones, minus the default all-yellow character.
👤 DRAKE
— XXL Magazine (@XXL) August 30, 2021
💿 CERTIFIED LOVER BOY
🗓 FRIDAY pic.twitter.com/f1nTIucyKh
At face value, it seems to suggest that Drake likes many different types of women, but everybody already knows this. What we don't know is how many secret children the artist has actually fathered: Fans didn't learn about the existence of precious little Adonis until the kid was nearly two.
Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, Drake confirmed that he had a son (after Pusha T leaked the news) through lyrics on his fifth and most-recent studio album, Scorpion.
Now I'm not saying that Drake is about to reveal he has 11 more kids because of the 12 pregnant emojis on his purported album cover for CLB... but wouldn't that be amazing?
😭 would rather find out drake has multiple baby mamas than this be the album cover. Please this has to just be promo 👏 pic.twitter.com/84U98Ck0J7
— z (@zabayyb) August 30, 2021
More likely, the round-bellied women represent Drake's affinity for doing things with women which could result in pregnancy — things that lovers do. Certified lovers.
Drake confessing to the world the confirmation he has got gotten more pornstars pregnant.
— 3veril Makes Art (@3veril) August 30, 2021
Or maybe the heavily pregnant women are a nod to how late Drake was in releasing his latest work — roughly nine months (CLB was initially scheduled to drop in January of 2021).
Drake’s album cover is pregnant women cause the album 9 months late
— Tervis Scoot (@tervisscoot) August 30, 2021
Some people are even drawing links between the record's Labour Day Weekend release date and women who will soon be in labour.
According to the internets….
— Ebro (@oldmanebro) August 30, 2021
“Drake is dropping Certified Lover Boy , an album about love (baby making) 9 months after the expected release date, (9 months is a full term pregnancy), on LABOR day weekend. which is why there are pregnant emojis on the cover”
Whatever the case, fans of the award-winning Toronto rapper are having fun speculating wildly about what the art means and whether or not it will actually be the cover of Drake's new album.
Inside sources say album cover may be hinting at a collab between Drake and Kanye pic.twitter.com/IJGFmnOmtt
— 🇲🇽Oskie🌻🐝 (@OscarVsTheWrldd) August 30, 2021
Some on Twitter are really feeling the idea, especially given the alleged involvement of Hirst, who is tagged in Drake's original Instagram post.
1 of 2 By Damien Hirst. #CLB pic.twitter.com/521H61Wdzq
— Drake Related (@drakerelated) August 30, 2021
Hirst, an iconic British contemporary artist known for his insanely expensive yet simple-looking work, has not publicly acknowledged the post or confirmed anything, but fans are running with the rumours either way.
Drake announced his new album “Certified Lover Boy” coming out on September 3rd. The artwork is inspired by Damien Hirst, who he tagged on his Instagram announcement post. The Damien Hirst NFT floor is 15 ETH and only rising (≈ 24x from mint). pic.twitter.com/Kc51nnNSxo
— Farokh (@farokh) August 30, 2021
Many online are dragging the apparent cover art, however, saying it looks childish...
Drake picking out the album cover for certified lover boy: pic.twitter.com/VNMaZuorX0
— memory lane (@bitchitz999) August 30, 2021
Cheap...
the budget for drake’s new album cover pic.twitter.com/j8kZ3Honbr
— Z 💜 (@betterpositionz) August 30, 2021
Derivative...
drake album cover is just this but emojis pic.twitter.com/DBdBl1Liba
— Randy Stargate (@ybloodpriest) August 30, 2021
Out of place...
How did drake manage to fumble the album cover so badly… pic.twitter.com/QLMvSkkvFG
— 𝐙 🐸 (@sixersin1) August 30, 2021
And perhaps most-painfully of all given Drizzy's (sort of) rivalry with Kanye West, many are saying that the CLB cover is worse than the art for Ye's newly-dropped Donda.
All I can do is laugh when I think about how we’re going to look back at the history of Drake & Kanye’s beef and these will be the two album covers of their competing projects. 💀😂 pic.twitter.com/NnVhuIeNlw
— ɳick (@Creat1ve) August 30, 2021
The burn is that Kanye didn't release any art for Donda. The album has no cover.
Bro Kanye didn’t even have an album cover and it’s better than drake’s LMAOOO #donda #CLB pic.twitter.com/pAdAHTfZkx
— Arab Mclovin (@TheArabMclovin) August 30, 2021
A lot of people are simply using the image as joke fodder, making and sharing their own modified versions.
New album cover update from drake pic.twitter.com/OpoSSIwUOs
— Glo🌪 (@GloDaYoungan) August 30, 2021
It's important to note that, while many outlets are reporting that the pregnant emoji print will be the cover of Drizzy's new album, the artist himself has not confirmed this. He simpy shared the image with a release date for Certified Lover Boy.
If it is actually the album cover, we can expect a whole new wave of disbelief, confusion, and likely disappointment.
"Kanye just has a black album cover, and drake has pregnant emojis," wrote one fan after seeing the post Monday morning. "I'm tired."
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