Basquiat drawing featured on The Weeknd’s new album.
Cover of Hurry Up Tomorrow by The Weeknd, featuring Jean-Michel Basquiat, Upon Leaving the ‘Norm,’ 1977. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Courtesy of Artestar.
A 1977 drawing by Jean-Michel Basquiat will adorn the special collector’s edition cover of The Weeknd’s upcoming album, Hurry Up Tomorrow.
The cover artwork, sourced from Basquiat’s teenage sketchbooks, portrays a group of figures standing in front of a simple cityscape. These characters are accompanied by the text “Working Class Heroes” and stand beneath another figure floating with a balloon and a bubble that reads “Ho-Hum.” The title of the piece, Upon Leaving the ‘Norm’ (1977), is written across the top right corner of the page.
The album cover subtly nods to The Weeknd’s debut mixtape, House of Balloons, which also used balloon imagery—a symbol representing his ascent into mainstream recognition. This tie-in highlights The Weeknd’s longstanding admiration for Basquiat, who has influenced his music and style, particularly the musician’s hairstyle.
The limited-edition release will include a line of vinyl and CD covers featuring Basquiat’s artwork. Hurry Up Tomorrow is set to be released in January 2025 and will be accompanied by a film starring Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan. In November, The Weeknd released two additional limited-edition versions of the upcoming album with cover art by comic book artist Frank Miller and Japanese illustrator Hajime Sorayama.
Basquiat created the cover art for several musicians. Perhaps most notable is the work he made for the 1983 single Beat Bop by Rammellzee and K-Rob. One copy of the total 500 sold for $126,000 at Sotheby’s in 2020. Basquiat also made the cover of San Francisco punk band The Offs’s only record in 1984. Most recently, The Strokes featured Basquiat’s Bird on Money (1981)—the original is currently on view at the Rubell Museum in Miami—for their 2020 album The New Abnormal.
Works by Basquiat, who died in 1988, are often featured across various creative sectors. For instance, in June, H&M launched a new clothing line in collaboration with the artist’s estate and luxury streetwear brand Who Decides War. The partnership drew inspiration from “King Pleasure,” the 2022 exhibition organized by the Basquiat estate in Los Angeles that displayed 200 seldom-seen works by the artist.
