When painter and sculptor Devon DeJardin needs an extra dose of inspiration in his downtown Los Angeles art studio, he likes to put on some rap. Only this isn’t just any regular rap music: “We call it the rough and rowdy phase where it’s like heavy, dirty, grimy, hood rap,” DeJardin says. “It just gets us moving and feeling a certain way.”
Even before he was an acclaimed multidisciplinary artist — with work displayed in the permanent collections of Space K Museum in Seoul and the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. among others — music was always a big part of DeJardin’s creative process. Growing up in Oregon before moving to California in his early 20s, the now-LA native ran through different phases of music as a kid, with rock, hip-hop and punk inspiring early entrepreneurial and artistic endeavors alike. But it was through rap where he found his fervor; the energetic groove he needed to lay down a cacophony of colors on canvas, or build one of his signature “Guardians” from cold, barren plaster into a towering masterpiece.
It was also through rap that DeJardin landed one of his biggest moments of his career to date, after the artist was commissioned by Gunna to design the cover art for the rapper’s new album. Releasing August 8, the appropriately-titled The Last Wun seemingly heralds an end to Gunna’s time with YSL Records, re-teaming him with frequent collaborator and producer Turbo for a final follow-up to last May’s One of Wun.
The cover art features an original painting by DeJardin, depicting Gunna as a sculptural and imposing apocalyptic-like figure, at once bruised and defiant, and posed against a stark background.
“It was about trying to capture Gunna in his essence of where he is in his life,” DeJardin explains, “and then adding stylistic elements to it, to represent anger and vengefulness but also represent peace, stability, perseverance, grinding. It’s like he’s working through his pain and grit, and he has a literal chip on the shoulder as if he’s got something to prove right now.”
Gunna says DeJardin perfectly “captured the zone” he was in while making the album. “The visuals match the whole vibe of the project: pressure, pain, progress, and real reflection,” the rapper tells Rolling Stone. “It had to reflect this moment in time, where I’m at, what I’ve been through, and where I’m headed.”
In short:
“It’s raw, it’s elevated, it’s me.”
DeJardin and Gunna first met through a mutual friend in February, when they all happened to be in Dubai (DeJardin was completing a month-long artist residency while Gunna was there for a concert). The rapper invited DeJardin to a dinner party he was hosting, but though they made brief small talk, nothing really materialized from the meal. “He kind of skirted out early and I didn’t really hear anything from it,” DeJardin recalls. “So I was like, ‘That’s okay, that was still a cool experience.”
A few weeks later, DeJardin was back in LA when got a call to come down to Gunna’s studio. He immediately hopped in his car and pulled up to a nondescript North Hollywood building in the middle of the night. “Gunna was sitting in his chair getting his hair braided and started playing his music for me,” DeJardin recounts. “And I just turned to him and said, ‘Bro, you gotta let me do an album cover or something. I feel like I could crush it for you.”
Gunna’s reply: “What’s the story?”
From there, it was weeks of studio visits and texting and chatting, as Gunna and his team talked up the urgency and gravity of his new music, while DeJardin shared the inspiration behind his art. Some nights would just be spent listening to the new tracks with Turbo behind the boards, while other nights a group assembled around DeJardin to hear him speak about his longtime theological studies and his ongoing search for spiritual transformation. Gunna’s team would chime in occasionally with context about the album, emphasizing the rapper’s newfound focus three years removed from his well-publicized legal troubles. “This album is so important to us because of what Gunna’s been through,” DeJardin recalls them saying.
And then, one day, it was finally time to create.
