Cypress Hill – Black Sunday (1993, photography by Anthony Artiaga concept and design by Dante Ariola)Ĭypress Hill were cholo stoners obsessed with hydroponic strains and doom in equal measure, rap’s answer to Cheech and Chong and Black Sabbath. Simple yet effective and now forever iconic, the cover was gangster yet inviting, just like g-funk. Inspired by the logo for Zig-Zag, the French-originated rolling papers, Dre’s mean-mugging photo supplants the illustration of the French soldier that appears on Zig-Zag packaging. The cover of The Chronic points to the latter. riots – the album was all that and more while turning g-funk into a cinematic sonic experience meant to soundtrack cruising, gang activity, and smoke sessions. A diss record that eviscerated Eazy-E, a sociopolitical treatise on all the injustices that inspired the 1992 L.A. The producer/rapper who claimed he didn’t “smoke weed or sess” on “Express Yourself” became an avowed smoker when he recorded his aptly named solo debut, 1992’s The Chronic, for the then newly formed Death Row Records. Dre made a hard pivot after leaving N.W.A. Dre – The Chronic (1992, art direction/design by Kimberly Holt, photography by Daniel Jordon)ĭr. Talking to KCET about the sexual cover art, Slick said, “…e already established how we were going to crop it in, and how it’d be real a real subtle thing. The rollercoaster was partly inspired by the Colossus coaster Magic Mountain in Valencia, CA, and the woman was modeled on adult film star Ebony Ayes. The cover for the group’s Delicious Vinyl debut, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, is as colorful and libidinous as songs like “On the DL” and “Otha Fish.”ĭesigned by graffiti artist, fine arts graduate, and eventual street clothing designer Slick (Richard Wyrgatsch II), the Fat Albert-esque cartoon on the Bizarre Ride cover depicts the group riding in a cart on a winding and dilapidated rollercoaster straight into the mouth of a woman. Instead, the group of dancers turned rappers offered self-deprecating comedy, stoner hijinx, emotional vulnerability, and youthful lust, couching everything in jazzy yet bumping beats. The Pharcyde were the antithesis of the posturing, ostensibly invincible gangster macks who dominated L.A. The Pharcyde – Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde (1992, artwork by Slick)
and his belief that Black men could rise above the country’s past atrocities and present injustices. The image displayed Cube’s unrelenting indictment of the U.S. flag while Uncle Sam lies dead beneath it. On the cover, Ice Cube stands inside a morgue, pledging allegiance to the U.S.
Gangsta rap made me do it full#
The album was as personal as it was sociopolitical, conscious yet full of contradictions that the press picked apart. Police, politicians, the president, white people, women – the list goes on. Everyone was a target for his ire and interrogation on his sophomore album, Death Certificate. That mentality became even more apparent in his solo work. When Ice Cube arrived with N.W.A., he held nothing sacred and had no idols. Ice Cube – Death Certificate (1991, photography by Mario Castellanos, art direction by Kevin Hosmann) “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,” Poppleton told NME of the Straight Outta Compton cover photo. Lacking funds for locations or lighting, Poppleton and Hosmann improvised for the cover shoot. gig via friend and art director Kevin Hosmann. The Straight Outta Compton cover photo of the group, taken from the perspective of a potential murder victim, mirrored the album’s every sound, sentiment, and gunshot.įresh from California Institute of the Arts, photographer Eric Poppleton got the N.W.A. Meanwhile, Eazy-E played the swaggering, malt liquor-swilling dopeman. Backed by that production, Ice Cube and MC Ren captured the anger Black men in Compton and elsewhere felt from enduring police brutality in poor, gang-ridden neighborhoods that were already veritable war zones. Dre and DJ Yella crafted a barrage of banging yet funky beats that hit harder than LAPD battering rams. didn’t create gangsta rap, but they codified the subgenre’s invincible, irreverent, and militant gangsta mythos on 1988’s Straight Outta Compton. – Straight Outta Compton (1988, photography by Eric Poppleton, art direction by Kevin Hosmann)
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