THAT Record sleeve for Kanye West's 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'

Record sleeves recent made the news pages of music websites when geek rocker Weezer decide to put chubby Lost star Jorge Garcia, better known as the show's character Hurley, on the sleeve for their new record.

The results were greeted with much mirth, and merriment, though it turns out, they claim, that they were in fact naming it after the international surfware company.

Roll forward a few weeks to Kanye West, around whom a great deal of anticipation is building ahead of his forthcoming album, 'My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy'. The rapper says that is label told him US Chainn Walmart wouldn't stock the proposed cover, though they have just an hour two ago released a statement to deny this.

The rapper how now proposed to offer 5 different album covers in order to be able to offer one which will not offend national supermarket chains, and other mainstream retailers.

Anyway, for my own take, I think the proposed image does expose the dark spectre of racism which still looms large over US society. The half-woman half-phoenix straddling the beer-holding man may not be a clear representation of a human being, but the implication is clear - as is the sense that miscegenation is not welcome in America, and represents the worst fears of US's white majority.

The whole fiasco also reminds me of Spinal Tap's 'Smell The Glove' argument in their hilarious movie, where a  woman kneels before a man, who is holding out a glove before. "You should have seen the cover they wanted to use", says their nefarious English manager to an uptight female record executive. "I tell you, he wasn't holding a glove".