Here’s a completely unsurprising story that I want to repeat just to point out what a whiny little baby Kanye West is. Remember when Kanye West put out that ridiculous album art for “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” that featured a budget semi-nude painting with an evil Kanye character f*cking a phoenix while drinking a bottle of Sprite? It looked straight from Regretsy (credit: DListed) and ended up getting banned – according to Kanye. Kanye twatted about how his artistic genius was being squashed or something, but the “artist” recently admitted that Kanye told him to whip up something that would get banned – presumably just so Kanye could complain about it and earn more headlines.

It was all an act: Kanye West complained in October that the cover of his new album, ‘My Dark Twisted Fantasy,’ was banned (something that was publicly made never official), but it turns out, the controversy was exactly what he wanted.

West’s album’s controversial cover art, which featured a painting of West having sex with a phoenix and drinking, was painted by artist George Condo, who told The New Yorker that West specifically ordered controversy.

Having seen Condon’s paintings, Kanye selected the painter to do the artwork, and as Condo explains it, he wanted, “something that will be banned.”

In October, West angrily tweeted about the “banning,” saying:

In the 70s album covers had actual nudity… It’s so funny that people forget that… Everything has been so commercialized now.

I know that cover just blew yall minds … I wish yall could see how hard I’m smiling right now!!!

In all honesty … I really don’t be thinking about Wal-Mart when I make my music or album covers #Kanyeshrug!

I wanna sell albums but not at the expense of my true creativity.

So Nirvana can have a naked human being on they cover but I can’t have a PAINTING of a monster with no arms and a polka dot tail and wings.

[From The Huffington Post via ONTD]

According to that interview with the New Yorker, Kanye reached out this artist, George Condo, and they spent five hours listening to Kanye’s new songs in preparation. Kanye picked the most sensational painting, and of course wasn’t able to use it for the cover. He ended up using Condo’s painting of a ballerina for the album along with a heavily pixelated version of the painting for the other releases.

So here’s the thing – now that we know that Kanye puts himself in these situations so he can drum up controversy and play the victim – how premeditated was his “I’m gonna let you finish” rant? He couldn’t have predicted Taylor Swift would win, but he’s changed his story on that issue so many times that it’s clear he’s milking it for as much publicity as possible. This is what Kanye does – he tries to work everything to his advantage, including his freakouts and outbursts.

(Note that the part about Kanye asking for art that would be banned is not in the audio explanation of the interview on the New Yorker’s website. That must be in the print edition.)

Photos of Kanye at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade credit: PRPhotos