When Pusha T dropped his recent Daytona album, much attention was placed on the striking cover of the project. Pusha had mentioned that Kanye had scrapped the original cover at the last minute, dropping $85K just to license a new cover: a picture of Whitney Houston's bathroom during a time of heavy drug addiction.
While the picture suited Pusha's coke-moving raps well, there were those who had issue with the cover. Namely, the family of Whitney Houston, herself. In an interview, Whitney's cousin, Damon Elliot, expressed his disgust with the choice of album art. After a panicked call from his daughter, he says he, "immediately got sick to my stomach because it took me right back to six years ago." Elliot is demanding an apology from Kanye and Pusha, and asking that they change the cover art to something else.
However, it seems that Elliot doesn't speak for the entire family. One of Whitney's nephews, Gary Michael Houston, thinks the blame should fall to the family member that sold the photo in the first place.
In a statement on Good Morning America, Gary says, "Not to be divisive, but I’m of a different mindset when it comes to situations like this."
He continues, "People will automatically look to people like Pusha T and Kanye West and try to place blame or say they have ill or malicious intent in order to gain publicity. But I get it." He also mentions that he's a fan of the album.
To Gary, the real villain here is the person who originally snapped the picture and sold it to tabloids years and years ago. "The person who violated the trust of my aunt by taking the photo and selling it to tabloids for their own personal and/or financial gain is more of a travesty to me," Gary says. "People should research that — because whoever exposed it are the people who violated her trust, mistreated her, and who should ultimately be held accountable for contributing to circumstances surrounding her demise."