Is Justin Bieber About to Shoot a Graffiti-themed Music Video in Kensington?

This week, I stumbled on another one of Glossblack‘s INCREDIBLE murals. One of dozens that have been popping up all over the Riverwards area for about a year now. This one located at Hope and Palmer streets in Kensington.

But, unlike the majority of Glossblack’s recent commissioned pieces, most of which aim to celebrate neighborhood and Philly pride (examples of that here, here, here, and here), THIS mural seems to play a different role. And might that role be in a yet-to-be-filmed Justin Bieber video?

After investigating Glossblack’s Instagram to better understand his new piece, I saw this…

Glossblack’s comment about the piece reads: “Huge thanks to @klughaus [aka Klughaus New York, a contemporary art gallery based in New York] for including me on this project for the new @JustinBieber album (ft. @TravisScott). Thank you @defjamrecords [aka Def Jam Recordings].”

I guess it should be quickly noted that Justin Bieber is in fact signed to Def Jam, and he does have a song titled “No Sense” featuring Travis Scott on his new album that was released on November 13th.

Ok, so, first thought: this might just be the image Def Jam and Justin Bieber are using for the single on iTunes and Spotify. But, that does not appear to be the case, at least not that I can find.

Next possible conclusion: this wall will perhaps soon serve as the backdrop in a Bieber/Scott’s music video for the single.

This conclusion seems to be shared by at least one of the commenters to Glossblack’s original Instagram post…

So will Kensington soon be swelling with “Beliebers”? Who knows. (If you know though, feel free to comment!)

Either way, big props to Glossblack for (potentially) introducing himself to a whole new, International pop audience. And/or, at the very least, getting some Def Jam money!

UPDATE (12/4): It seems that, after a TON of interest in this story/mural online, a few commenters have pointed me in the direction of an answer… 

According to Vulture, “To ready his fans for [his new album], Justin Bieber teamed up with a slew of graffiti artists to install colorful, creative murals that detailed all his remaining, and previously unknown titles, as well as collaborators.”

The murals began popping up in 18 cities across the globe just a few weeks ago. Those cities include: Sydney, London, Stockholm, Paris, Oslo, Berlin, New York, D.C., Philadelphia, Toronto, Boston, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver, and L.A. (Feel free to checkout each city’s mural at Vulture.)

But why might Justin/his team have hired graffiti writers from around the world to execute a graffiti-themed promotional stunt?

In a recent interview with BBC’s Radio 1, Justin explains, “Basically, I just want to collaborate with the best.” Adding: “Pop music just means popular music, so you take what’s hot in the world right now and you flip it and you make it your own. I think that’s something awesome that Michael Jackson did. He always took what was super relevant at the time, like funk and techno and all that stuff.” 

So, there you have it. Judge for yourself… The mystery is solved!