Artist Camille Baldwin Almost Quit Painting — Now Her Work Is a D Smoke Album Cover

When three-time Grammy-nominated rapper D Smoke performs this Sunday, Nov. 2 at San Francisco’s August Hall, he’ll be promoting his latest album, Wake Up Supa.

The album is a 2025 standout, with features from Snoop Dogg, aja monet, BJ the Chicago Kid and Lucky Daye, as well as the Bay Area’s own LaRussell, JANE HANDCOCK and Miles Minnick.

With bilingual bars, banging beats and heartfelt messages about the recent passing of his mother, Jackie Gouché Farris, D Smoke’s album runs deep.

So deep, in fact, the album’s cover art alone is a story in and of itself. It’s a tale about perseverance and self-efficacy. It’s also about leveraging modern technology and rejoicing in a connection created by a higher power.

The painting shows a young person, standing with their back turned to the viewer. The kid is sporting an olive-green beanie, a blood-orange hoodie and a chocolate-brown backpack with two white doves emerging from its open pocket.

On the left-hand side of piece is the album’s title. Toward the bottom is D Smoke’s signature. And on the neck of the person in the painting is a tattoo that reads “J Gouche.”

“He asked me to add the tattoo of his mother’s name to the painting,” says artist Camille Baldwin, noting that the piece especially resonated with the musician after he lost his mom last year.

Baldwin, an artist from East Oakland, made this piece while also experiencing a bit of grief, and simultaneously balancing the hope of a brighter tomorrow.

The image was birthed from a sketch Baldwin conjured up while riding through the Midwest with her husband, Markell. Pregnant with their second child and en route to say their final words to her husband’s ailing sister, Baldwin was quietly on a emotional and professional rollercoaster most artists can relate to.

“I was also probably going through like my 10th time quitting art,” she says.

While riding shotgun, discussing life stories and business ideas, she started drawing an image of a kid wearing a hoodie. The clothing was a nod to folks she grew up with in Oakland, as well as the Chicago and Indiana communities where her husband was raised.

She added a backpack, plus a pair of doves “that represented hope, but also mourning.” While the bag shows a child on a journey, the birds are emblematic of that kid taking hope along for the ride.

In an Instagram post this August, D Smoke told the story of how the connection came to be, explaining that the album was completed but still didn’t have artwork.

“Camille hit me up to share her art with me,” he writes, “letting me know she was considering hanging it up.” Impressed by her work, he not only purchased the piece but soon made it his cover art.

The two didn’t officially meet until after an agreement was secured, the physical art was shipped and the album cover was already finished.

At a late summer listening party for the project, Baldwin and her husband eagerly arrived early. D Smoke eventually pulled up, hit the stage and briefly addressed the crowd before spotting Baldwin. “He’s like, ‘Oh wait, Camille,'” she recalls, “and then he invites me over and hands me the mic.”

She remembers the experience as “super nerve-wracking.” But she contextualizes the piece in the scope of her career: “This is the biggest opportunity that I’ve had so far.”

That opportunity was a long time coming: As a teen, Baldwin won multiple art competitions while attending the now defunct Candell’s College Preparation Academy in East Oakland. But instead of pursuing a creative career, Baldwin took classes at Chabot College and CSU East Bay, graduating with a degree in human development. “Yeah, totally not art-related,” she says.

In 2019 Baldwin, then working as an x-ray technician, sought therapy. She was introduced to the practice of art therapy, where a trained therapist would lead her through breath work and ask her to blindly move a pen across a canvas.

“Many times,” says Baldwin, recalling the sessions, “what I had on the paper was something that was bound, or an image that was just circled a bunch of times.” It was all pointing to the tension she was feeling; a stifling force was blocking her from expressing her creativity.

The therapist also gave her assignments where Baldwin would draw from “a feeling in the moment.” The whole experience opened up her mind and altered how she viewed art. “I started to paint again,” Baldwin says, “but from a different place.”

With renewed confidence, she stepped back into her career. After moving to the Midwest four years ago and experiencing all that comes with showing her art at galleries, Baldwin now realizes that the up and downs for an artist are constant. The key, she says, is getting out of the “scarcity mindset.”

During a particularly low point, when she was once again considering quitting art, she began DMing musical artists who’d influenced her work. Her goal was to have pieces purchased, or at the very least seen. All the while, she knew that “it’s an ongoing struggle to translate views to transactions,” she says.

Her Hail Mary attempt didn’t get an immediate response from any of the musicians she reached out to. Frustrated, she enrolled in a cybersecurity course through Google.

But, Baldwin says, “every time that I try to quit, I always get an answer back from God that I have to keep going.”

This time the message came in the form of a DM from D Smoke, asking about the painting with the kid carrying the backpack.

Baldwin’s biggest takeaway from the whole experience is simple:  “Don’t self-reject,” she advises, “because you’ll get enough of that from whoever you reach out to.”

Instead, she says it’s always best to just put yourself out there and see what happens. “There are so many things that are beyond our control and understanding,” she says, interrupting herself mid-sentence.

“I still don’t understand how this D Smoke thing happened,” she says. “It’s crazy.”

D Smoke’s album ‘Wake Up Supa’ is out now, and he will perform this Sunday, Nov. 2 at San Francisco’s August Hall, alongside Jay Taj and Oakland’s Ian Kelly. For more information on the show click here.