In the early hours of this morning Kid Cudi unveiled the album artwork for ‘Kids See Ghosts’;  the debut record from his new collaboration with Kanye West.

According to Kid Cudi, the cover art is by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, who is also behind Kanye West’s artwork for his 2007 album ‘Graduation’. It bears several strong visual similarities to art concepts posted by West when he returned to Twitter back in April.

The Kids See Ghosts project was confirmed earlier this year by Kanye West, who took to Twitter to announce the new project. “Me and Cudi album June 8th,” he posted. “It’s called Kids See Ghosts. That’s the name of our group”. 

The release date for ‘Kids See Ghosts’ is set at June 8 via GOOD Music, Def Jam and Wicked Awesome. It comes just a week after the release of West’s seventh solo record ‘Ye’.

• Read more: NME’s verdict on Kanye West’s seventh studio album ‘Ye’ 

Kid Cudi first caught West’s attention back in 2008, when the two met at a Def Jam meeting. After hearing an early Kid Cudi demo, West subsequently signed him to his label, GOOD Music. The two have since collaborated on a vast number of projects: Kid Cudi featured heavily on West’s 2008 album, ‘808s & Heartbreak’ as both an artist and a songwriter. Kanye West was the executive producer for Cudi’s 2009 release, ’Man on the Mood: The End of Day’. However, the Kids See Ghosts project marks the first time that the two have released an album together. 

Kanye West also posted further details about Kids See Ghosts earlier this year, saying that the album will be released alongside a short film, directed by music video director Dexter Navy. The director has previously worked with A$AP Rocky, and following his ‘L$D’ video, West sang his praises on social media. “”Everybody with any form of taste knows that was the best video of the year,” the rapper said. No further details have since been revealed about the visual aspect of the project.

Elsewhere, Kanye West recently shared that he was writing a philosophy book called Break The Simulation about society’s obsession with photographs. Yesterday (April 18), he began posting lines that he explained were him writing the book “in real time”. “No publisher or publicist will tell me what to put where or how many pages to write,” he said. “This is not a financial opportunity this is an innate need to be expressive.”

Words by Annabel Steele 

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