Sorry if this was posted before ...didn't show up in the search.

A few days ago, Kanye said his album cover was banned from retail and implied that Walmart had role in it. EW reached out to the bargain chain and said they never saw the artwork.

"We're excited about Kanye West's new album and we look forward to carrying it in our stores on November 22nd. As always, it's our standard practice to carry the edited parental advisory version. We did not reject the cover artwork and it was never presented to us to view."

Source: http://music-mix.ew.com/2010/10/18/kanye-west-artwork-walmart/

I know Def Jam spent a tremendous amount of cash just so Ye could make this album, but I always was rooting for the "Banned Artwork" story to be true. I know many would then claim the whole project as flop because of sales ...but thinking about the bigger picture. It would go down as a statement to future generations that you don't need a specific design to be accepted in the public eye. Just let the music speak for itself. The art was merely a visual trigger to foresee what the album potentially could sound like beforehand ....which by the cover, is nothing you've heard before. If this whole "Ban" situation did actually go through I would feel like it would definitely be more of a collectible than just "another album" which was a big deal in the first place. I mean initially I actually thought there was going to be FIVE DIFFERENT COVERS so that if you got one there was four others that you would/wouldn't have (depending if you were going to buy the other four which I was going to do haha) That was just my hope. Contradicting myself I do want to see Kanye succeed and prevail this time around showing that negatively truly is a fuel to create something better. We'll all see what happens on "The Truman Show" next....