Kanye West is known for having his finger on the pulse, but it’s still something of a surprise that the cover of his latest single, “Power,” is a commission byAmerican painter George Condo. The painting, in Condo’s inimitable Picasso-meets-insanity style, isa violently abstracted portrait of Kanye’s face with several gaping mouths.

Long out of the spotlight, Condo — a New York painter who came up in the early 1980s alongside grande geste practitioners like Julian Schnabel and David Salle — has been having a striking comeback recently. This year a macabre bronze sculpture of his was included in the Whitney Biennial, and he has also garnered some visibility for interdisciplinary collaborations like his mask-making turn in Paris for fashion designer AdamKimmel — who dubbed the painter “the most stylish, bad-assmother” — and his projects with the skateboard andclothing company Supreme. 

As for Kanye, we last spotted him dozing off at the Matthew Barney Q&Afollowing Cremaster 4 & 5. We imagine he was simply exhausted from staying soculturally relevant: the hip-hop icon already worked with Murakami at the peak of his fame (the artistturned him into a collegiate cartoon bear for the cover of his 2007 album Graduation), performance artist Vanessa Beecroft, techno stars-cum-performance artists Daft Punk, and others.