As the Internet and technology for music distribution continue their expansion in the marketplace, the importance of artwork and tangibility of albums increasingly comes into question. For many music fans, album cover artwork remains as valuable as the artist’s music. Certainly, A&Rs and marketing executives of record companies pressure artists to adapt to short-term fashion and pop cultural trends for their photo layouts and album artwork to sell more units. But in this poll, the artists and their album artwork signified and influenced new movements in hip hop at the time of their releases.

During the 80’s and 90’s, hip hop music expanded beyond its New York City birthplace, evolved in its sound, and popularized in the mainstream. Many eras, movements, and subgenres of rap music that arose within this decade had intersected, giving fans a vast variety to follow and choose from. Rap artists inspired their album cover artwork with representations of their life experiences, origins, ideologies, and illustrated the sound and character of the record. Hip hop fans born in the Generations X and Y not only anticipated the release dates of their favorite artist’s new music, but also their album artwork deemed as equally eventful in finding for the first time. At times, devoted fans discovered some of their favorite artists based off the cover art alone. This poll is dedicated to them.

   
1. A Tribe Called Quest- Midnight Marauders

   

Released in November 1995, Liquid Swords culminated the East Coast’s revival in hip hop amidst the West’s Coasts dominance in the early to mid-90s. Riding the momentum of the critically acclaimed debut albums from Wu-Tang Clan in late 1993, successful solo outings from members Method Man, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Raekwon the following two years, Liquid Swords fulfilled Method Man’s eminent description of the lyricist that the group “forms like Voltron and the GZA is the head.” The album has been considered the one of the best albums of the extensive Wu-Tang catalog. The album cover’s comic book-style drawing of the Japanese samurai sword fight scene on the chess board was instant attraction for fans. It visually set the tone for the music content, with the fight scene paralleling GZA’s razor sharp battle rhymes, dark-horse style, and vivid tales about the harsh realities of East New York’s unforgiving streets. Accompanied by snippets from the early 80s cult classic samurai flick Shogun’s Assassin for the majority of the interludes, complimented by the RZA’s gritty, hard-hitting bass lines layered with a distorted guitar-attack production, the result embodied a cinematic-like masterpiece. It helped Staten Island collective gain a cult following beyond hardcore hip hop fans, including social misfits, skateboarders, Birkenstock-donning hippies, Magic card-playing geeks, and music savants that may not have been rap music fans prior to the release.

According to P.E. frontman Chuck D in The Book of Hip Hop Cover Art, the group’s cover art was “more thought out than the songs.” Designed by a former NASA employee, the cover for Fear of a Black Planet is what Chuck D considers his proudest. Released in March 1990, hip hop’s consummate revolutionaries were making a profound statement of leadership and political consciousness in rap music. The imagery of the black planet with the group’s logo eclipsing Earth represented their ambitions to intimidate and overshadow any that opposed their mission.  The music was equally confrontational to galvanize hip hop fans and Black America to party for their right to fight.  

The music and cover art of this album not only immortalized 2Pac in hip hop history, but in the music forever. The rap legend had total creative control in this project, recording the classic within seven days, one month before his death, and was released two months after his murder in September 1996. Released on Election Day 1996, his motive was to prove that more young people would rush to the stores to buy this album than to the polls to vote, in hopes gain attention from politicians to solve problems affecting America’s youth. The morbid depiction of his crucifixion was 2Pac’s way of illustrating his anger and feelings of persecution from mainstream media of his image and influence, catapulting the MC into martyrdom. The record bore endless interpretations and conspiracy theories amongst fans and numerologists regarding his death and the album’s purpose. To this day, fans of Pac shed so many tears in hopes that hip hop’s “Elvis” will return from his widely rumored exile, similar to the original Machiavelli who wrote The Art of War in the 1500s (The Italian military strategist mysteriously faked his death, went into exile soon after, and returned seven years later to seek revenge on his enemies). Not to theorize, but it is somewhat ironic that the hip hop icon died in Las Vegas, Nevada- a renowned haven for Elvis imposters.  

It doesn’t get anymore hardcore than this. The legendary Houston trio leaves no room for the viewer’s self-interpretations of the group’s message from the album title and cover. The photo was taken from the group’s hospital emergency room rush, after Yoda-like character Bushwick Bill’s eye was accidentally shot out by his girlfriend in a near-fatal scuffle in which he attempted to commit suicide. The lore of this death-defying experience served as a mere example for the dark subject matter of the album- crime, misogyny, nihilism, despair, and determination by any means to overcome odds from dwelling in Houston’s Fifth Ward ghetto. Talk about “when keepin’ it real goes right.” (Shout out to Dave Chappelle)

6. Nas- Illmatic 

The debut album from Queens, New York’s favorite son marked a turning point in East Coast hip hop and the rap industry altogether. The success of the album began to help rebalance the New York scene’s power to the West Coast’s prominence in the rap game, along with acceptance of uncompromising hardcore, complex lyricism in the mainstream. Released in 1994, the lyricist’s highly-anticipated debut displays his baby picture in the front of the landscape of the Queensbridge projects, symbolizing Nas as a thoroughbred product of his environment.  The Old English calligraphy-style font spelling his name on the cover serves as a testament of nobility upon his entrance to the rap world. Much to Ghostface Killah’s displeasure (he infamously complained in the “Shark Biters” interlude on Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx album, “Niggas bit off of Nas’s shit!”), countless hip hop and R&B artists since have followed this artwork by using their own baby pictures for their covers.

This cover reflected the influential early 90’s New York underground rap trio’s Five-Percent ideology, and utter disdain for blacks “Tomming up” for their white counterparts. The controversial artwork of the black Sambo caricature in a Hangman noose game was part of the group’s initiative to address their “positive kause in a much damaged society.” In 1994, Elektra Records reasoned that releasing the album with its radical imagery would “kause much damage” to the label’s reputation, shelving the album and group for years as a result. The group’s DJ Subroc was killed in a car accident during the album’s production, causing a the group’s breakup shortly thereafter. For the rest of the 1990s, KMD fans were left shorted of their anticipation for the group’s landmark album. After many years of hiatus from the rap scene, the group’s main MC Zev Love X re-emerged as MF Doom in the late 90s, and officially released the seminal album in 2001 after to years of popular demand.  

After leaving NWA in 1989, the West Coast gangsta rap pioneer entered the new decade recording and releasing music- with a vengeance. Fittingly released on Halloween 1991, Death Certificate frightened liberal and conservative politicians, police officers, Korean immigrant convenience store-owners, interracial couples, white suburban residents, and the black bourgeoisie from the album’s incendiary cover and content. It was lambasted by pop music critics for the cover photo displaying a dead white person toe-tagged as “Uncle Sam” covered by the American flag, with an angry-looking Cube standing above the corpse. Although, it was heavily praised by hip hop critics and fans as an instant classic. The cover photo also reflected his then-newfound Islamic faith with a bald head, renouncing his former signature Jheri-curl that helped make him famous. The album helped popularize West Coast gangsta rap in the 90s, and contributed to the political statements of the Afro-centric movement in hip hop during the beginning of the decade. Being a product of crime-ridden South Central Los Angeles normalized by gang warfare, constant harassment from notoriously racist L.A. Police Department, misunderstood by American mainstream media, and discovered that he was almost financially betrayed by his former group and their manager, you have to rhetorically ask yourself: what could he do?  

This cover art visualizes the psychoanalysis of the pioneering New York underground hip hop duo’s minds and subject matter for their seminal sophomore album. The apocalyptic-like cartoon sketch was an amalgamated display of the duo’s frustrations with their record label and the rap industry, personal hardships, dire family issues, romantic relationships lost, the death and jailing of close friends, racism in New York City, and living in the high-level crime and chaos of their Southside Queens origins. Also, the image of Pharoah Monch’s enlarged glowing fists and Prince Poetry’s steaming mallet were a threat to any MCs that dared to battle against the tandem’s super-heroic, ultra-lyrical rhymes and styles that were well-organized, although sometimes confusing.