Israeli-born illustrator Emek is one of the talents keeping poster art alive. Described by Henry Rollins as the “thinking man’s poster artist”, Emek continues many of the traditions of 1960′s psychedelia. His work is always hand drawn and heavily layered, mashing the political and personal; the organic and technical.

Yet despite his prolific collaborations with some of music’s biggest names, there’s one artist he was born to work with. “Working with Erykah,” he says “always brings out the best in me… I’ve worked with hundreds of bands, and I have to say that she is pretty unique. What kind of musician would fly an artist halfway across the country just to discuss the ideas of the album cover in person? And then cook them a wonderful vegan meal and play charades with her kids? Erykah, thats who.”

Emek first worked with Badu on 2008′s critically acclaimed New Amerykah Part One (4^th World War). Note: read the Sleevage post for that album here. On that cover, Emek focused on the “politics and social conditions in the world today, things that were weighing on her mind.” It was a dark but dynamic image, with Badu sporting knuckle dusters, her trademark afro entangled with the corrupted baubles of contemporary urban life.

When Emek listened to New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh), he discovered a new groove-based sound that was “more personal”. The resulting cover art retains the political symbolism – keen eyes will notice new references to foreclosed homes and the Tea Party  movement – but this time they’ve receded to the background. We get the feeling that a confident and all-conquering Badu has transcended them.

“You built a wall 20 feet tall / But if I get off my knees / I might recall I’m 20 feet tall”, she sings. Emek states that this lyric “was an inspiration to draw her to be a large face. She is 20 feet tall”. Her armour represents the way she is protected from the “harsh realities of life”, while the “color purple of the tree and the sky represent the 7th chakra”.

In many ways, both Badu and Emek are throwbacks. Badu made her name as a pioneer of neo-soul, and her early output triggered countless Billie Holiday comparisons. While never allowing her sound to stagnate, she’s consistently skated the fine line between batshit-crazy and inspired. Witness the video clip for her 2010 single Window Seat, which sees her stripping naked at the site where President Kennedy was assassinated, before pretending to be shot.

An artist as brave as Badu no doubt needs the armour Emek has painted her. Just as he needs musicians of her calibre to inspire his work. “Both Erykah and I were raised without a TV in our house, we grew up on record cover art”, he says. Let’s hope there are kids out there today being inspired by Badu and Emek.

There’s a difference between batshit crazy and eccentric. It’s a fine line but Badu manages to stay firmly on the right side of it. By every measure, 2008′s New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) should have been a total disaster.

There’s the unwieldy title, the status as a ‘concept album’, the big messy themes of urban violence, poverty and race relations. One couldn’t help but anticipate an incoherent throwback to a bygone era where hip hop actually took these issues on with honesty and passion.

The cover art certainly evokes that period, with its retro aesthetic. And it cleverly makes the most of Badu’s trademark afro to illustrate just how much the soul diva has on her mind. The Egyptian ankh, which represents life itself, sits at the centre. Around it we see a plethora of instantly recognisable symbols: pumped fists, satellite dishes, televisions, dollar signs and factories share space with malnourished babies, bees, flowers and peace signs.

The knuckle-dusters at the forefront spell out more than the album’s name – they represent her intentions. “To my folks on the picket line, don’t stop till you change they mind” is just an indicative sample of the fighting words found throughout.

It’s a really cool cover that manages to take on big issues in a striking and cohesive fashion. Much like the music itself, which defied perceptions to become a major critical and modest commercial success. New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) represents a career high for the talented musician and image maker.

At the same time the album hit stores, the video for debut single Honey was released. It sees her fittingly paying tribute to some of the greatest covers ever made. Check the full video out here

Now updated.

This striking cover from hip-hop maestro Jay-Z immediately caught our eye and we featured it yesterday. However our readers were quick to point out that we’d only scratched the surface in our review. So thanks to our learned, intrepid and (let’s face it) sexy readers, here’s an updated feature.

This month sees the release of The Blueprint 3 by Jay-Z . The legendary rapper is in top form, with the usual emphasis on slick production and collaborations with big names that include Kanye West, Timbaland, The Neptunes and Rihanna. In many ways, it’s business as usual for this consummate businessman – with the exception of the cover art.

It’s not a new thing to bemoan the paucity of quality hip-hop sleeves, which is what makes The Blueprint 3 so refreshing. Check out the behind the scenes video to appreciate the craft that has gone into making it.

Many have noted a passing resemblance to the muted cover of U2’s No Line on the Horizon.

While others point to Now Here is Nowhere by The Secret Machines.

Or Kingdom of Comfort by Christian rockers Delirious?.

But the album’s aesthetic and concept owes its biggest debt to the previous work of photographer Dan Tobin Smith. The assorted of junk is also reminiscent of his work for Athlete’s Tourist album.

Tobin Smith worked with art director Greg Burke and set designer Nicola Yeoman to create the mod, minimalist cover art for Jay-Z. With its gathered assortments of white instruments and electronic equipment, it makes me feel like I’ve stepped back into some avant-garde gallery in the 70’s.

And in a way, it turns out that’s the decade where Jay-Z wanted to take us.

Referring to the gathered instruments he says: “These things are like the forgotten pieces in hip-hop. It’s still about music. It’s not about radio, making gimmicks — it’s still about making music. Those things are piled in the corner. These are the forgotten things about music. It’s still about music. It’s not about radio, it’s not about making gimmicks, it’s about music.”

The three red stripes are also a symbolic call for a return to simpler times.

“The three stripes that everybody is asking about is made from the original [number] three. The first three they made on the wall was someone carving. If you look at [the number] 3, all they did was connect lines. The whole thing about this album, how I approached it, is that I wanted to make a new classic to start that all over again — to go back to making classic albums like the ones we grew up listening to.”

At this stage of his career, it’s a worthy goal to set out to make a classic. It’s also admirable that he would put so much thought and effort into a concept cover. After all, the sentiment that hip-hop needs to return to the ethos and integrity of a bygone era is nothing new – it’s just surprising to see it expressed in such a lateral and subtle way.

Update: there is a great interview with Dan Tobin on Itsnicethat.com who goes into great details about the cover and the process.

Here’s a quick excerpt.

This is one of the most anticipated albums of the year, and the first album Jay Z hasn’t appeared on the cover, how did you get involved in the project and what was the reasoning behind a much more sculptural approach?

Greg Burke, the creative director on the project at Atlantic records had seen the Letter ‘E’ I had shot with the set designer Nicola Yeoman and I guess he had it in the back of his mind when he was thinking of ideas for Jay Z’s new artwork for Blueprint 3. I think Greg and Jay Z had lots of ideas about what the album meant and it seemed to be about taking it back to the source, in terms of the music itself and then subsequently the artwork. For the album and the idea was it was very much about the music and all the things that make music. The 3 is represented by 3 bars which is of course the old way of writing ‘3’ so that seemed to work really nicely with the idea behind the album and the set design that evolved. We all liked the idea that the installation was almost machine like, like all these things were interlinked. That’s why everything is packed and jumbled together. Like it had kind of grown out of this corner.

I think it was a brave approach for Jay Z as all his previous albums have had him on them. I love still life, and the way I shoot is quite old school. It took 3 days to shoot, was all shot on 10×8 inch film, so the quality in the whites is fantastic, so much subtle tone. We worked long and hard on the colour work on the post and even in a single page mag advert I can see that effort. You could blow the image up to the size of a building and it would still hold up. It seems the album is about that old school crafted production so its nice that that same method went into the shoot.

Here is the letter E piece Dan refers to

I’ll leave it to the designers to argue over the merits of including the artist name, website and album title on the cover. This could simply be a clear case of Jay-Z the artist making one compromise with his old friend Jay-Z the businessman.

Note: This is the first album cover to not feature Jay-Z. Lucky as it would have been hard to quick change into this one.

And for those interested Alex Goose has released for free “The Blueprint 3 Outtakes” album with tracks that didn’t make the initial cut.

The most notable thing about Mos Def’s fourth solo album is that it’s available as a t-shirt. He’s become the first artist to endorse The Original Music Tee™, a concept that’s pretty damn clever. Basically, you buy the t-shirt with the cover art on the front and the tracklist on the back and it comes with a hangtag featuring a unique code that allows you to download the album in MP3 format.

This makes a lot of sense to me. The idea of being able to express your support for an artists’ new album by literally wearing the cover kind of works. You get to make an addition to your wardrobe and your iTunes at the same time. This combination of music and fashion might even serve to put an emphasis back on the importance of cover art design. If people are meant to wear it, designers won’t be able to dial it in.

It works for girls too, because they can slip one on and look just like this.

My only problem with the proposed format is that the t-shirt costs twice the price of simply downloading the album, which kind of defeats the purpose. After all, it’s always been possible to buy the album and then buy the official t-shirt – if they want to change music-buying behaviour they’ll probably need to offer better value rather than rely on novelty.

And while The Original Music Tee™ could hypothetically re-introduce the importance of cover art design, then it could also change it forever. After all, cover art has always been defined by the limitations of a square CD or record cover. T-shirt design is something else entirely.

The cover for The Ecstatic, which is also available through iTunes, sticks with tradition. The image is taken from the film Killer of Sheep, an underground cinema masterpiece set in an LA ghetto in the late seventies. Shot on less than $10,000, it’s gritty realism and low budget meant that it never gained a wide release.

Nonetheless, most who saw it became passionate advocates and, after it’s initial release in 1977, it went on the win the 1981 Berlin International Film Festival. In 2007 it was re-released in art cinemas and on DVD to mark its thirtieth anniversary.

The cover for hip hop classic Illmatic was originally going to have a picture of Nas holding Jesus Christ in a headlock. I’m not sure why that didn’t go ahead (although you would think the label might have had some concerns) but the ultimate cover is a far more reflective and subtle effort.

Illmatic was released in 1994 and today it regularly tops lists of the best rap albums ever released. The cover features a picture of Nas as a 7 year old that was taken after his father, musician Olu Dara, returned home from an overseas tour. Obviously no one told him to say cheese. Art Director Aimee Macauley superimposed the picture over a New York city block, which represents the ghetto.

According to Nas, age 7 “was the year I started to acknowledge everything [around me]. That’s the year everything set off. That’s the year I started seeing the future for myself and doing what was right. The ghetto makes you think. The world is ours. I used to think I couldn’t leave my projects. I used to think if I left, if anything happened to me, I thought it would be no justice or I would be just a dead slave or something. The projects used to be my world until I educated myself to see there’s more out there.”

Speaking to XXL only this year, he expands: “Really the record had to represent everything Nasir Jones is about from beginning to end, from my album cover to my videos… That’s what it was all about for me, being that kid from the projects, being a poster child for that, that didn’t exist back then.”

It’s a moving image that feels quite cinematic – the young child amid the ghetto, looking forward into an uncertain future. It also inspired an apt cover for the follow up, 1996’s It Was Written.

Whether Illmatic has inspired other covers is the source of much controversy. A scant five months after its release, The Notorious B.I.G came out with the album Ready to Die. The cover art does seem fitting for an album that opens with the birth of a baby and goes on to spin a narrative based on Biggie’s life.

It would even be cute if it wasn’t for the dark bravado of the title. But in 1995, Raekwon and Ghostface Killah cried foul on the song “Shark Niggas (Biters)”

YaknowhatI’msayin? Niggaz niggaz niggaz niggaz is bitin off your
album cover and shit
Yeah!
Whoa bad enough they biting lines like niggaz killed me
Yeah
When they came with some Nas, niggaz bit offa Nas shit!
KnowhatI’msayin?

(What he’s saying is that Biggie copied Nas)

The biggest selling hip hop album of 2008 was The Carter III by Lil Wayne. I’ve been enjoying the exploits of hip hops’ new king and appreciate his showmanship and efforts to create a unique persona, although there’s more than a few people that disagree with me. The cover for the Carter III has naturally attracted comparison to Illmatic, given that it features a photo of the artist as a child.

A return to childhood and the formative years of youth are common in hip hop, another example being the classroom theme and artwork for The Miseducation of Lauren Hill. Would Nas be right to claim that the other kids have been copying his work? Let’s have a class discussion – one at a time and raise your hands please.

Live album artwork is a tough call… How does a designer create a striking and original concept when they’re usually provided with a stock-standard single (probably grey-scale or sepia) photograph of an artist on stage in front a legion of adoring fans?
Here’s a predictable photo+brief. Go forth, unleash your genius!

The Cat Empire’s first live album, Live On Earth managed to dodge the live album drudgery minefield. The creative agency Debaser, still featured the mandatory gig pics, but also provided saturated colour & high contrast, reinforced the band’s identity as a live act, conveyed the multi-faceted nature of the band*, & threw in an extra shot of a guy in a ski-mask for good measure.

* rock / jazz / hip-hop / pop / ska / reggae, if you didn’t know… I’ve never in my life seen a granny shaking it with a teenager in a hoodie during a turntable scratching solo other than at an Empire show – it’s… unique.

If you live in Australia and go to more than one gig a year, you’ve been to a show. Their live show reputation precedes them: on the opening night of the Sydney Festival this year, they played to 100,000 people in The Domain. They hold the record for the most consecutive shows at Sydney’s Metro Theatre (8 sold out gigs) & the largest audience ever in Darling Harbour. The six of them have toured since 2000, playing in Cuba, Japan, all over Europe, Canada, the USA, & of course Australia (hence the name Live on Earth) and tallying up a massive 650 shows in the last 7 years.

So it makes sense to use a photo-mosaic to convey their sheer number of live shows and sizeable audiences. The high colour saturation captures the energy and wildness of their shows. Also, how the hell else do you show a horn section + turntables + african drums + keys + dancing nuns all in a single image?

I’m grateful they didn’t resort to the cliched photo-mosaic style popularised in the 90s which adorns so many college dorm walls, where the comprising images may as well be photos of Persian cats for all the detail we can see… The Cat Empire photos allow us to see the fans and band members in equal perspective (the first time the band has featured prominently on a cover), and attempt to form no greater image other than the simple and iconic Cat Empire logo.

Speaking of… the Cat Empire crowned cat-eye logo (known as “Pablo”) has been a single thread running through their back catalogue – it has featured prominently on all their artwork, and is reminiscent of the omnipresent NIN logo. It’s fantastic when a band makes a conscious stylistic decision to find an image / font / concept that represents them and actually sticks to it, like the Weezer Century Gothic logo, NIN logo or Iron Maiden’s Eddy .

Of course, the world’s love affair with Helvetica has been continued on the Live On Earth album. The choice was for Ultra Compressed, although it has been slightly distorted for their usage. Having recently seen the Helvetica documentary, sans-serifs are haunting my dreams.

The kids responsible for the artwork are Dave Homer & Aaron Hayward of Sydney firm Debaser, who are responsible for most of the fantastic Australian album art for the last few years including Empire of the Sun, Jackson Jackson, Paul Kelly, Faker, Kisschasy, Tim Finn, Powderfinger, etc etc…

The Live On Earth album is available from Feb 28 in Australia, but you can download a free 25min live version of The Car Song off the album at www.thecatempire.com.

It’s been a while since Oscar & Ewan have emailed us and I was pleased to see they hadn’t forgotten us when they sent through Roots Manuva’s latest album “Slime and Reason”. Probably the only thing I dislike about the album is the title :)

I’m not sure if this is O&E’s thing but they really like to make stuff and photograph it. It’s this manual labor that really makes their work stand out. O&E were also responsible for one of our most popular covers from last year Slime and Reason is no exception. This also makes their work look like fun to work on. I can just imagine their work spaces being filled with half finished bits and pieces and left overs from photo shoots.

While it initially looks like a 3D rendering, you can see (on closer inspection) that it’s actually a plaster sculpture. If Roots had of been American you’d just need to throw a few big booty, bikini babes in his slime pool and you’d be ready to go.

Also I can’t help but feel it’s like the monkey brains scene from Indiana Jones.

“Wiley’s Play Time is Over”.

Here’s some insight from the guys on the process of creating the album cover. This was originally sent to Merge Magazine as part of a Q&A. Not that I can find it on their site to link up so I’m using it here.

“The title was the idea, we took a very literal translation. There were other considerations too that helped, Roots Manuva’s past two covers have had him facing forward, and centrally framed. so although this is aesthetically a departure from those covers, it has kept a link. also the plaster bust shows a defined and prestigious character, where as the slime takes the edge off it, making it contemporary and quite jovial, which we feel suits this album. Lyrically often the listener is wondering just what is inside his head. Our past covers have been quite visually busy, but we aimed to make this one very stark and striking, recognizable from a distance and quite iconic.”

“The building of the head was a long process, and one that we weren’t quite sure how to approach. We thought originally that we would commission a sculptor to make the bust, but that was extremely expensive and the result may not have looked exactly like Roots, then we thought about a live cast of the head in plaster, but they can often look quite ‘dead’, the face can sag in the plaster and there isn’t much flexibility with the expression.

So after some looking around we found out about 3D scanning and rapid prototyping. This was the best option, the scanning process is very quick and accurate, and having the 3D model in the computer meant we could edit the bowl into the head at that stage, before the rapid prototyping. So we got the rapid prototyped model, then commissioned a sculptor to cast it in plaster. this was quite a nervous stage as we had to make a mother cast with the rapid prototyped model, which we had to smash to get out of the cast, so we had no original left. the sculptor then had to go on holiday, so we had to removed the plaster head from the mother cast with no previous experience of sculpting, then sand down the head and sculpt the eyes. The green slime was 3x bottles of green Aloe Vera hand soap.”

Here’s some work in progress and behind the scenes photos from this long process.

The photos above look like a dodgy backyard porno? Not that I’ve really watched much dodgy backyard porn.

And lastly here’s what Roots would like like if Roots Manuva and the Pillsbury Doughboy had a bukkake session.

The single artwork for “Buff Nuff” (above) and “Again and Again” (below) all share the same sculpture shot at different angles.

I would have liked to have just seen different things inside his head like the behind the scenes photo with the bananas below.

The fact you get a very quick 3D scan would have made it easy to start working on the layout quickly. So it’s kind of rapid prototyping design aswell. Here’s a few test 3D renders showing what a Roots Manuva easter egg would look like and what Roots would look like if he was cast in the Smurfs movie. Reggae Smurf? A lesser design agency would have just used this as their cover. (And it still would have been better than many others out there)

Note:O&E both only graduated in 2007. So they are not only talented mofos but young too. Definetly ones to keep an eye on.

You can buy the album from Ninjatune via Root’s official website.

You can also buy a green plastic wallet but I think that’s one of the worst pieces of merch I’ve seen in a while.

P.S: I’ll spell check this post tomorrow. I did a little midnight blogging and there’s always mistakles.

As a huge fan of the original, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Stones Throw have just released a reworking of the classic hip-hop album Madvillainy (2004) with a special box of goodies, or as they much more eloquently put it:

“a big ass box full of cool ass shit that you won’t be able to get anywhere else.”

Here’s a look at what’s inside (reposted images). A 7 inch of a lost Madlib track recently found:

A cassette tape of the original unfinished demo tape that was infamously leaked:

A Madvillain tee:

A comic book continuing on from the All Caps video:

And of course the cd (yawn):

Jeff Jank, art director for Stones Throw, designed the artwork and packaging. I asked him for some more photos hoping to get more of a peek inside, but even he is yet to get his hands on the complete package which is currently being manufactured. You can get the details here and pre-order here.

Here is the cover of the original Madvillainy album:

On a complete tangent, but related note, J.J. Abrams talks about the power of the ‘mystery box’ which I found appropriate here.

It’s good to see labels on the right track producing quality packaging and offering extras true fans crave for.

While it’s certainly not his best album, I think the cover has a lot going for it. With DJ Shadow touring next month I thought it best to look at his album from 2006.

The iconic kid cowboy with records was strong enough to work for the two other singles off the album. Limited editions and regional pressings all featured the same artwork but with a different background texture. The singles featured the kid in different poses. By creating this “mascot” for the album is made the rest of the visual communication easier. I also dig the ribbed display font too. But I’m a sucker for big display fonts.

This type treatment has become the main logo for DJ Shadow lately. It’s very Merchandise friendly and all self respecting DJ’s need a recognizable mark these days.

Here’s the UK limited edition cover. I do miss the yellow though.

If you’re a DJ worth your salt then you probably received this version. Not sure what the lightning bolt on the back is for. I’m guessing to it’s easier to flick through when in a big pile.

The Japanese release featured a red background. The kiddie cowboy DJ thing might have been seen as a horror film poster as the Japanese love their kiddie killers.

The singles “Enuff” and “This Time” both kept the kid cowboy theme going.

I like this image of the records on the little reg wagon.

Posters & flyer’s for the album and tour all featured the little cowboy.

There was also a series of limited edition prints made.

The designer Paul Insect was the founder of UK design group Insect which now seems to be disbanded. Luckily he has his own personal site which is the obligatory coming soon type stuff.

I asked Paul what was the meaning behind the little cowboy DJ and Paul sent me this. I’ve pasted this verbatim and as Paul explained at the beginning of this email “Sorry for the up AND DOWN TYPE… GLass of wine AND a lAPTOP DON’T MIX VERY WELL.” Rock & roll :)

“WE WENT WITH THE KID, as I felt, AND SO DID JOSH SHadow, thAT EVERYONE at some point
when growing up hAD BEEN an outsider of some kind, AND HE hAD FELT THat when stARTING
OFF BEING a DJ, so the down trodden boy following his dreAM Seemed the right direction to take
the ARTWORK.

THE BOY HIMSELF Was A FRIENDS CHILD WHO Was being bullied AT SCHOOL, and
hAD BEEN mADE TO FEEL an outsider himself, for no pARTICULar reASON.
So he wAS an obvious choice for me WHEN I Came to take the photos, SO WHEN he
could finALLY Take A COPY OF the record into school to tALK about the whole experience, doing A
RECORD SIGNING WITH DJ SHadow, AND a whole bunch of other stuff he did, he wAS NOW A LEader…
and hAS NOT BEEN BULLIED SINCE.
Confidence BUILDING IS a powerful thing.”

For more info on Paul’s work check this blog entry on Anti-Corp from 2007.

I’m a sucker for an illustrated cover, especially one so intricate and sexy as this one. I’m not sure what the brief was but microscopic underwater fantasy is what they ended up with. How that fits into the theme of the album is anyone’s guess but does it really matter? I need to retract my statement about Hip Hop having a bad reputation for artwork.

Here’s the back cover which is reminds me of an overly complicated Roger Dean illustration for Yes.

If you’re lucky enough to track down a limited edition LP it features glow in the dark ink and spot varnishes. You can only just make this out on the photo below. Here’s hoping Lex can throw one our way so I can photograph better.

The designer EH Questionmark are the same people who did the sexy UK version of DangerDoom. Lex was also the record label. EH? put a site up already!

The release details were thoughtfully put onto a top left corner sticker. This looks like a bit of a Lex trademark as they have done this with other releases too.

Shape of Broad Minds is a relatively new hip hop group featuring Dr Who Dat?, Jawwaad, Jneiro Jarel, Panama Black, Rocque Wun. A quick check of Jneiro’s Wiki page reveals that all but Jawwaad are alter egos of Jneiro.

I guess you can demand a bigger tour bus if you use a few extra names. And conversations like “Sorry bro, we need another $5k for the tour. Yeah Panama Black needs bail money and Dr Who Dat? needs to pay the hoochies” can be expected :) Here’s Jnerio talking to Urb magazine on his fav hip hop alter egos.

I’ve only sampled the tunes on their Myspace page and it’s not your standard hip hop tunes here. It’s more intune with MF Doom and the more experimental beat masters. Note: I’m talking way outside my pay grade on hip hop so please take my comments with a grain of salt or feel free to educate me in the comments.

An EP title “The Blue Experience” was released before the album. Is it just me or is this artwork mildly sexually suggestive? Anyone studying psychology like to elaborate on that?

I also found this orphaned piece of art that seems to be a half finished version of the cover. What ever it is I offer it here for your viewing pleasure.

And if that wasn’t enough underwater doodling to keep you happy Lex just released 20 minute mix titled “Raiders of the Lost Mix”. MP3 here. As this is a free download the artwork is less important. In fact I’m not even sure what the artwork is for?

And if you’re a huge fan and want a desktop based off the artwork the best I can offer is this background tile I took off their Myspace page. I had to clean up the edge too. They work quite well.

Although M.I.A.’s music can easily stand on it’s own, it’s the artwork which really completes the picture. A collage of bright colours, retro patterns and heavily pixelated type can be found in a variety of media, from her music videos, website and fashion to the visuals at her live performances.

I was lucky enough to catch one of her shows recently and the visuals, which are tailor made for each song took the performance to another level (see video for first single ‘Boyz’ below).

It’s hard to say who exactly is responsible for all of this but it appears to be a collaboration between M.I.A. herself, Cassette Playa (Carri Mundane) and Steve Loveridge (Steve also designed the sleeve for M.I.A.’s first album Arular). Most notable in the artwork and videos for latest album Kala is the work of Cassette Playa. Carri Mundane AKA Cassette Playa is making waves in the U.K. for her part in the London Rave revival (she also dresses the Klaxons).

The cover for Kala looks like it could have been made on early version of Photoshop. Maybe a take on roughly made club flyers made by people who’s job isn’t making club flyers. Regardless, the artwork absolutely complements M.I.A’s sound.

I had to do a second take when I saw this. It hits you after a few seconds how smart this cover is.

10 years of Big Dada records and paraphernalia were layed it out in a museum/gallery space to give it a tongue-in-cheek artifact like presence. The art direction is spot on and as with all of Oscar & Ewan’s work theirs always and underlying concept that holds it all together.

The type on the album is treated in a simple fashion. I also like the message from Big Dada founder Will Ashon on the inside of the packaging.

I love this photo used for the CD gate fold of the entire Big Dada collection spread out.

The DVD release is also given the same museum treatment, this time with VHS and Beta tapes.

The images were photographed in St Bride Printing Library with James Musgrave.

Bid Dada is part of Ninja Tune which also prides itself on releasing quality artwork.

Wiley’s latest, and said to be last, album “Playtime is Over” is a great example of how hip hop doesn’t always take itself too seriously. I love the subtle humor and juxtaposition of colour, you almost do a double take. It reminds me of when I used to colour my lego black with a big marker pen to make it look “cooler”.

The first edition of the cd came with a gloss black plastic tray and a black-on-both sides CD. (ala PS2 game discs). The designers wanted to avoid imposing any text on the photos, so all additional text was on a sticker on top of the cases.

Oscar & Ewan said that Wiley briefed them for something “gangster” which I find pretty funny. This cover was a colab job between O&E and Eat Sleep Work/Play.

Here’s what Per Crepin’s photo looked like before the retouching by Christopher Peabody. Everything except the climbing frame was spray painted black and then re-shot.

Here’s a sneak peak behind at the photo shoot.

The albums track listing is written on a black board which also carries across to the other type on the covers.

Different artwork, but continiuing the theme, is featured on the 12 & 7″ singles for “My Mistake”.

The black bucket of shapes would make a great present for a goth.

I’d never heard of Bus Driver before seeing this cover but after listening to a few tracks on his Myspace page I’m impressed. The album title alone stands out but it was the cover artwork that got my attention.

The cover shows a big bloody furry ball which is a play on the album title. I’m also sucker for the silver ink too.

Canadian design group Seripop also sent me these photos of the album insert.

My fav’s the cover for it’s simplicity. It’s like a big yeti nipple.

Bus Driver also produced a series of promo videos directed by Ben Barnes for the album. They’re short films previewing tracks from the album. It’s a great promotional idea and considering Bus Driver’s marketing budgets would be tiny compared to most artists they look great.

Here’s a Youtube version of promo 5 below. Get the hi-res Quicktimes here.

Seripop told me that they actually created the artwork for Bus Driver’s first single off the album Kill Your Employer and expanded on that style for the album cover. Again I prefer the album cover design as it’s complex yet simple.

Note: As someone who employs a dozen or so people I hope no one actually gets too inspired by this song :)

Yeh yeh, chicks, cars, guns it’s a dissemination of male fantasies…sure..whatever. Cliched hiphopism aside Bill Sienkiewiczs‘ cover art for The RZA as Bobby Digital debut was a sweet deal for any fans of comic art and 70′s/80′s movie posters.

The composition is all Indiana Jones/Bond/Star Wars of the late 70′s/early 80′s (Sienkiewicz actually did some poster art for Return of the Jedi) with that collage of movie moments at various scales thing that I can’t get enough of.

-Plus the washed out pastels make it look old and less cartoony, more ‘designy’ like Robert McGinnis‘ Bond posters.

Replete with fake movie titles – it’s classy and detailed. If I’d come up with some out there alter-ego who’s all about bitches,guns,coke and high tech weaponry and my commisioned artist handed this in, I’d be well chuffed.