Skepta Unveils Release Date and Cover for ‘Konnichiwa’ Album

London MC Skepta has finally announced the release date for his long-awaited Konnichiwa album, and with it comes what looks like the cover for the album.

The album's been in the works for years, but after Skepta began running with Drake the process seemed to be put on hold. In the interim, Skeppy's released a bunch of excellent tracks including "It Ain't Safe," "Shutdown," "Nasty," "Lukey World" and more. The tracklist is below, and according to the iTunes pre-order, Pharrell is featured on "Numbers."

Skepta's seen his popularity soar since he dropped his last official project Blacklisted in 2012. Since then, grime has begun catching on in the U.S. and Drake was quick to hop on the wave by doing songs like the "Ojuelegba" remix with Skepta.

Drake also recently announced that he had signed to Boy Better Know, the label Skepta's brother JME started. Whether it's official is unclear, as Drake only claimed so on Instagram, but with Views From the 6 dropping at the end of the month, we should have a better understanding of Six God's label situation by then.

Konnichiwa was supposed to drop in 2015, but perhaps Skepta sensed something was off. A Drake co-sign can often be a gift and a curse; just ask Ramriddlz, whose "Sweeterman" got the Drizzy stimulus package to dubious effect. Maybe the London rapper understood that last year was the "Drake affiliation" phase, and it'd be better to build off that and drop the album once it had passed instead of specifically capitalizing on the attention he was getting from another rapper. Or maybe the album just wasn't ready yet.

But now that it is, we can't wait to hear. The baritone-voiced MC has been one of our favorites for awhile, so we're expecting nothing but crack on Konnichiwa.