Right now, the London grime veteran Skepta is getting ready to release a new album called Knife & Fork, as well as a film called Tribal Mark, his directorial debut. Later this month, he’s planning to release a new single called “Gas Me Up (Diligent).” After sharing that single’s artwork, which looks a whole lot like a reference to the Holocaust, Skepta has taken the artwork down and attempted to explain that the widespread interpretation was a misunderstanding.

The “Gas Me Up (Diligent)” single art is a grainy photograph of the back of a bunch of men’s shaved heads. One of those men has the phrase “GAS ME UP” tattooed across the back of his scalp. For many reasons — the shaved heads, the posture, the vintage-film quality of the photo, the Nazis’ habit of tattooing people in concentration camps — people took that artwork as an image of concentration camp prisoners and the title as an offensive joke. In rap, the phrase “gas me up” means to inflate someone’s ego, to make them think that they’re more important than they are. In this context, though, people took that in a very different way. (You can still see the artwork here.)

On Twitter last night, Skepta wrote that he’d removed the artwork and promised to “be more mindful going forward.” He also wrote that the album’s rollout is “about my parents coming to the UK in the 80’s, Skinhead, Football culture” and shared a moodboard of the album’s visual sensibility, which is full of old images of British skinheads with stick-and-poke tattoos on their faces and scalps. Here’s what Skepta wrote:

I’ve been waiting to drop Gas Me Up (Diligent) since teasing it April last year, worked hard getting the artwork right for my album rollout which is about my parents coming to the UK in the 80’s, Skinhead, Football culture and it has been taken offensively by many and I can promise you that was definitely not our plan so I have removed it and I vow to be more mindful going forward…

I can honestly see how my single artwork without context can be deemed offensive, especially in a time like this but again that was not my intention. But after some thought I don’t feel like I could continue being the artist you all know and love if my art is policed, I have to quit if I can’t express my art as I see it. So to help with context here are some pictures from our mood board for the 1980’s UK story for my album ‘Knife & Fork’

Gas Me Up (DILIGENT) will be out January 26th as planned.

This honestly does seem like a misunderstanding, but I wonder how many people looked at that cover art without flagging its implications.