This cover is inspired by A Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders and by the artist Keith Haring, who emerged from NYC's graffiti culture.
Originally intended to be a collage of posed silhouettes, the finalised cover features a single repeating running pose. Layered and angled to create new shapes, this cover was designed to take the viewer on an adventure, emphasising the feeling of coming and going.
Originally intended to be a collage of posed silhouettes, the finalised cover features a single repeating running pose. Layered and angled to create new shapes, this cover was designed to take the viewer on an adventure, emphasising the feeling of coming and going.
Modern Graffiti in NYC spawned as a way for artists to gain popularity, often tagging subway trains which travel across the city. This grew into artists creating murals and motifs were common.
Here, I captured the contrast of new graffiti on old posters featuring a new(ish) artist in Rico Nasty. Hip hop borrows from the past to create and craft new sounds. You are only as old as you choose to be.
I wanted to create an image that looked "hard". Defiance in the face of adversity pushed Hip hop through ceilings and barriers time and time again. Here, one of the most (if not, the most) influential groups in Hip hop, NWA inspired this image. "Straight Outta Compton", a provocative cover in all of music puts the audience firmly in the place of victim.
Here, I chose to juxtapose our model as a "titan" of Hip hop against the titan of Toronto and it's most iconic building, the CN Tower. The CN Tower stands alongside the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the Burj Khalifa as a sign that you are firmly in the city.
Hip hop movies, music videos and songs often reference the "boys on the corner / mandem on the wall / porch sitters". People congregate to crack jokes, to recount memories and to look ahead. In this cover I focused on three archetypes found in these friendship groups. A joker, the comedian, always ready; The connector, bringing everyone together; and the easily annoyed, who can go from 0 to 100 in half a joke.
Without Disc Jockeys AKA Dj's we wouldn't have the breakbeat. In the early 1970s DJ Kool Herc developed a method to extend the musical breaks on funk and soul records by extending them on two turntables. This created room for the best dancers in the clubs to show off their skills. This spawned Breaking-Boys (B-Boys) and Breaking-girls (B-Girls). Mixing this with the tradition of Jamaican Toasting, DJ Kool Herc created space for rappers to break into the scene. This final cover is a visual representation of the vinyl record over a city skyline.
