Jack White's record label seems to have solved the Kanye West album cover mystery

Ben Blackwell, Third Man Records' co-founder and archivist, wanted to find the source of the "AR 1331 A" code printed on the front of Kanye West's JESUS IS KING album cover.

The code traces back to "Archer Records (AR) pressing plant code assigned to this 1970 Detroit gospel single." The gospel single is Rubye Shelton and Sister Orr's "I Want The World To Know Jesus" and "God’s Going to Destroy This Nation".

Third Man archivist and Detroit music historian Ben Blackwell has cracked the code on the mystery of what “AR 1331 A” means on Kanye’s "Jesus Is King" artwork. It’s the Archer Records (AR) pressing plant code assigned to this 1970 Detroit gospel single. @kanyewest @KimKardashian pic.twitter.com/ChOn1S4eZc

— Third Man Records (@thirdmanrecords) November 1, 2019

Blackwell told Pitchfork that the single also includes B-sides "The Hypocrite" and "Come Out of the Valley".

The archivist said of the code discovery to Pitchfork, "I knew the past decade spent in the deepest, loneliest recesses of Archer Record Pressing nerd-dom would eventually lead me to the biggest recording artist in the world. But enough about Jack White...who is this Kanye guy?"