Even more so than the great music we got this year, which was indeed all over the place, hip hop album covers failed to be unified by any common threads or trends. We got collages, portraits, doctored photos, surrealist paintings, video game-style renderings, highly literal interpretations of artists' personas, trippy doodles-- techniques that pull from more traditions and toolkits than the songs they accompany. We selected our fifteen favorites, culled from both albums and mixtapes, with the criteria of not only a stunning visual component, but also a connection with the stories, mood, or sound of the project in question.
ASAP Mob - Cozy Tapes, Vol. 1
The second ASAP release to incorporate a picture of ASAP Yams since his passing almost two years ago (the first was Rocky's A.L.L.A.), Cozy Tapes, Vol. 1's artwork is in keeping with the tape's more lighthearted mood. A baby Yams looks mid-laugh into a camera at one of those baby picture stations in Walmart or the mall, already looking swaggy as a youngster with a gold bracelet, atop some fur that's mimicked in the tape's fuzzy font. A very fitting cover for a tape Yams surely would've loved.
Bricc Baby - Nasty Dealer 2
Benjamin Marra, who got his start in hip hop doing Lil B's 6 Kiss design and has gone on to design T-shirts for Flatbush Zombies, did one of our favorite covers last year for Bricc Baby's first Nasty Dealer installment. The second tape also got the Marra treatment, who reimagined Snoop Dogg's iconic Doggystyle cover in his distinct "Beavis & Butthead" meets '80s heavy metal style. There's even a zooted minion hiding in there as a bonus!
Brodinski - The Sour Patch Kid
French producer Brodinski has gifted ATL rappers some truly top-of-the-line beats (including one on the first Nasty Dealer, mentioned on the last slide), and this year he dropped his first hip hop-only tape. It's unclear why he nicknamed himself after a sour candy, but we can't complain when the choice led to such unexpectedly creepy artwork. The producer's name is done up in a font that looks like it belongs on a '90s drum and bass album, contrasting with the rest of the cover's pulpy horror vibe. The centerpiece -- a Sour Patch Kid armed with a machete -- is the stuff of Twilight Zone nightmares.
D.R.A.M. - Big Baby D.R.A.M.
There's been a few great rap album covers that feature artists alongside real animals-- LL Cool J's Walking With A Panther, Ghostface Killah's Fishscale, even DJ Khaled's Major Key-- but D.R.A.M. is the only rapper I can think of who put his pet on an album cover. Since getting his goldendoodle Idnit earlier this year, D.R.A.M.'s put the pooch in the "Broccoli" video, brought it onstage at the BET awards, and posed with it for the cover of his debut album. The joy is as apparent in D.R.A.M.'s face as it is in his voice and outsized personality -- this guy radiates happiness and that's perfectly captured in this photo.
Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition
On the flipside of the visceral emotion spectrum is the cover of Danny Brown's latest album, which uses VHS-style distortion and an x-ray effect to convey the tortured, damaged-sounding content within. The dark photo of Brown is rendered unrecognizable due to those glitchy waves of retro tape wear, RGB coloration, and a face that's half ripped open to reveal bone. The border matches, rendering text through the same filters, suggesting that there's no way out of this eerie, visually ravaging trip.
Kamaiyah - A Good Night In The Ghetto
Sometimes all you need to bring joy to your friends are good snacks and good alcohol, and that's exactly what Kamaiyah's packing as she rolls back into her apartment complex. The bay area rapper's tape is a tribute to her neighborhood, family, and friends, and its cover depicts one of the many situations you could imagine her music either describing or soundtracking. You can't see her face, but you don't need to-- you just know hers is echoing the joy that's visible in each of her friends'.
Kaytranada - 99.9%
Definitely in contention with Atrocity Exhibition for the trippiest cover of the year, 99.9% is on the more playful end of the psychedelic spectrum, depicting Kaytranada's face as a many-eyed visage like Hindu god Indra's. That's actually artist Ricardo Cavolo's go-to style, mixing traditional Latin American signifiers (see the virgin Mary, the moth, and the Dia De Los Muertos skull) with cartoonish collages that intrigue with their use of subtle asymmetry. Busy covers only work on occasion, but like 99.9% itself, the fun part is catching something new with each viewing or listening experience.
Lil Uzi Vert - The Perfect Luv Tape
On his last two tapes, Lil Uzi has developed a persona within his artwork not unlike the bear mascot that graced the covers of Kanye West's first three albums. Initially designed by fvrris for Lil Uzi Vert Vs. The World, the neon cartoon style was inspired by "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World," and made even cooler on the more minimal cover for the follow-up, The Perfect Luv Tape. On it, Uzi is dragged down through a black void into a door that leads into a misty, mysterious cloud of electric hues-- definitely an applicable metaphor for an uninitiated listener's first experience with Uzi's technicolor music.
Lil Yachty - Lil Boat
"Am I the only one who really care about cover art?", Yachty asks at the beginning of his verse on Chance The Rapper's "Mixtape," clearly referencing the ambitious, self-referencing design used on his first mixtape. Done up in astonishing detail by artist Mihailo Andic (whose credits also include Drake's "Jungle" tour and artwork for Gallant) is a painting of Yachty wearing red fisherman's gear on his own Lil Boat. If you're going to be literal, you might as well commit the entire way.
Noname - Telefone
Having an in-house artist for your label is always nice, especially if they're as versatile as SaveMoney's Nikko Washington. After designing Towkio's .Wav Theory cover and merch for Vic Mensa, Washington reached a new peak this year with his beautiful painting for Noname that echoes her tape's soft-spoken meditations on life and death. One part still life, one part portrait, his oil painting is superbly textured, lending impressionistic, but lifelike, detail to the rapper's face.
Schoolboy Q - Blank Face LP
Thank god he was trolling with those original covers. Instead of the blanked-out faces of Crying Jordan and Donald Trump, Schoolboy Q's actual Blank Face design was much more mysterious and unnerving -- in other words, perfectly fit for the album itself. Clouds of toxic-looking gas rise behind a tangle of branches, and there's Q, perched in the corner wearing a mask and shades, looking every bit like a menacing figure you'd encounter in a nightmare. What are those semicircles at the top and bottom about though?
YG - Still Brazy
One of the most popular memes to make the rounds this year was a shot of Spongebob Squarepants' Mr. Krabs with his surroundings blurred in a fit of fear, confusion, or vertigo. YG's bare-bones Still Brazy cover uses a similar effect, but to much different ends. Gizzle is moving forward, then turns to look directly at the camera without stopping his motion, leaving a blurred outline of where he was milliseconds prior. There's a sense of calm to it, but one that's only won after surviving an attempt on your life.
Young Thug - No, My Name Is Jeffery
Yeah yeah, Young Thug gay dress fairy princess whatever... get it the fuck out of your system. The fact remains that the artwork for Young Thug's best of three tapes this year is his boldest and most daring yet-- and this is a guy who posed nude on the cover of an album last year. Recalling either a Mortal Kombat character or some Hayao Miyazaki reimagining of a geisha, the dress in question was designed by Alessandro Trincone, who couldn't have known the subversive purposes it'd be used for. An earlier version of Thugger's SS3 cover (worthy of inclusion on the list had it graced the final copy) imagined him as Medusa, but in hindsight, it's Jeffery's bold cover that adds more to his mythology.
2 Chainz & Lil Wayne - Collegrove
Sometimes, the right artwork is the simplest. In the past, Lil Wayne's put his many face tats on a baby, so why not Collegrove collaborator 2 Chainz? Instead of going the predictable route of blending Wayne's right side and Tity's left (Nelly's Sweat/Suit, anyone?), we get a much more subtle concept that nevertheless instantly alerts you to the identities of both artists. Simply genius.
21 Savage - Savage Mode
Something like a screenshot of a special dagger you'd find wedged into the innards of a volcano in a PS2 game fifteen years ago, the artwork for Savage Mode is as entrancing as the tape's Metro Boomin production. Pre-worn, paper-like cracks appear in the art like the various creaks and wobbles in Savage's voice appear in his verses, weathering the scene to make it feel like a snapshot handed down from generations past. "At last," Savage mutters under his breath, uncovering the sought-after heirloom amidst the heat-rocks of hell, "ISSA KNIFE."