2Pac asked me, ‘Yo, can you make the cross into a road map?’ He told me the cities he wanted on there, where he wanted them, and that he wanted a compass on top of it to signify east to west.
In an interview with HipHopDX, Brent remembers Pac spelling out a very specific vision: That feeling of persecution - along with a desire to reassert himself once and for all as the greatest rapper to ever live - is very much present in every aspect of this album, but especially in the cover art.Īccording to Ronald “Riskie” Brent, the Death Row Records in-house artist who did the controversial painting, it was Tupac’s idea to be crucified. Recorded in seven days a month before Tupac was fatally shot in Las Vegas and released under his Outlawz moniker Makaveli, The Don Killuminati: The Seven Day Theory has the sense of urgency of a man who knows it in his bones that his time is running out. The Don Killuminati: The Seven Day Theory - Makaveli (1996) Everyone seemed to like this idea, so they hired comic book artist Frank Gomez to illustrate what is now considered to be one of the greatest hip hop covers of all time.
ATLIENS OUTKAST ALBUM COVER MOVIE
Warfield, creative director for LaFace at the time, thought ATLiens “sounded like a movie comic books are basically like paper movies,” so that’s what they should go for. “The ATL for Atlanta, and the aliens for our status as foreigners in the hip-hop game.”Īccording to the Undefeated, the idea for the cover was born in the meeting where Outkast told LaFace, their label, the album title. “We’re still ATLiens,” a 21-year-old Andre 3000 (neé Benjamin) explained to The Los Angeles Times in 1996. That feeling of exclusion in a game they were clearly more than good enough to play in led to the overall theme of this perfect 10 of an album. Instead of cowering down, a pissed off Three Stacks grabbed the mic and matter-of-factly said, “The South got something to say!” At that precise moment, Outkast became the de facto superheroes of Southern Rap. To understand why ATLiens is such an in your face album, you need to know that Outkast made it after they were booed at the 1995 Source Awards when they won “Best New Artist.” This was at the height of the Death Row/Bad Boy, West Coast/East Coast rap feud, so attendees weren’t exactly down with having someone who didn’t belong to either camp get the recognition. That “My Mind Is Playing Tricks On Me” - the best rap song ever written about depression, paranoia, psychosis, and self-destruction– was the biggest hit in an album whose main art is the consequence of one of Geto Boys succumbing to these very urges feels preordained. “How many people have gotten their eye shot out and captured it on an album cover for everyone to remember? It’s hard to wake up in the morning and deal with that one.” “I didn’t really want to put Bill out there like that,” he said in a Vibe interview. Fellow Geto Boy Scarface was not pleased, which is very visible on the album cover (he’s the one to the right of Bushwick Bill). Instead of postponing, the record label just straight up did the shoot in the hospital, with a heavily-sedated Bushwick Bill displaying his jacked up eye. For some unexplainable reason, he survived the gunshot and only managed to lose an eye.Īll of this took place just days before the Geto Boys were scheduled to do a photoshoot for the cover of We Can’t Be Stopped. Because suicide is a cardinal sin and isn’t actually covered by insurance, Bushwick Bill violently coerced his girlfriend to pull the trigger of a gun aimed at his head. The dwarf rapper didn’t have the money so under the influence of grain alcohol, PCP-laced weed, and depression, he decided to get himself killed so his mom could cash out his life insurance policy. In the summer of 1991, Bushwick Bill, one third of the Geto Boys, needed $500 to pay off his mom’s medical bills. I couldn’t say for sure whether it was ready to fire, but it was definitely a real gun. “There was no artificial lighting or anything, I just lay on the ground and they pointed what hopefully was an unloaded gun down at the camera. “We were in downtown Los Angeles, we didn’t have money for locations and most of our shots were just really simple set ups,” Eric Poppleton, the photographer behind the iconic image, recounted to NME. Even the album’s cover wasn’t messing around.
Their songs scared and offended parents and law enforcement-so much so that the FBI sent the group an angry letter (currently on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland) telling them to quit it. Straight Outta Compton not only put west coast and gangsta rap on the map, it brought it to middle American suburbs. Everything about NWA’s debut album is transgressive in a punch in the mouth, “yo, I’m here!” sort of way.
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