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Updated February 11, 2020 5.0K votes 745 voters 25.4K views
Voting Rules
Vote up the most ridiculous cover.
It used to be that designing the cover to a hip hop album was the easy part -a cool photo, a big font, and you're done and off to the club. Classic hip hop album covers such as Dre Dre's The Chronic and Nas Illmatic went for the simple look while others such as Kanye West's College Dropout and Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory went for something more artistic.
But, like many simple tasks in life, when album cover design goes wrong, it can go wrong big time. A well meaning concept poorly executed can render an album DOA before it ever hits headphones. Here are some of the most ridiculous album covers in hip hop history.
This Houston hip hop group's problems began when they decided to spell element incorrectly in their name. The cover to their 1994 album Hit 'Em Where It Hurt only made matters worse. What do a dog/train hybrid animal machine, a race horse and convertible Chevy Impala have to do with each other or with hitting ‘em where it hurt? Why are the members of the group floating menacingly over the dog train? To the group’s credit, the cover to their 2nd album, Underground Railroad was slightly less ridiculous, even if it did keep with the train motif.
Apparently bad album covers are not just relegated to American hip-hop artists. Take Rhymester and the O.G. Japanese group’s 2010 album Manifestofeaturing the trio as centaurs holding swords that attract lighting. Hip hop is a universal language but whatever this means has been lost in translation. Rhymester has had a few great moments in their nearly 30-year career, this cover is not one of them.
If Omaha rapper Big Bear had used a typical cover for Doin Thangs, his 1998 album would have come and gone with little fanfare. But thanks to this cover created by Houston graphic design group Pen & Pixel, Big Bear has gone down in hip hop history for having one of, if not the most atrocious album cover ever. Flanked by grizzly bears wearing smoking jackets, smoking cigars and drinking out of goblets, Big Bear update the old dogs playing poker painting for a generation of hip hop fans to laugh at.
Bishop Lamont is a Los Angeles based rapper with a penchant for great lyrics, years of working with Dr. Dre to his name and a reputation for allegedly beating people up. With a name that includes Bishop, it probably seemed like a no brainer to pull together a pope themed album cover for his 2007 album Pope Mobile but the result was a hip hop exorcism. If the Photoshop job was not so bad, and Bishop didn’t look so serious, this might have been a winner. God forgive whoever designed this.
Buffalo rapper Conway the Machine used the cover of his 2017 album Reject On Steroids to flex on the hip hop industry in the weirdest way possible. To break it down: the bodybuilder is supposed to symbolize how hard body Conway’s songs are, and we assume the mask symbolizes the reject portion of the title. Conway, who's backstory about being shot in the head and neck and raw, old school hip hop delivery would have been better served by a classic hip hop album cover and not this nightmare collage. Let’s hope that Buffalo rapper’s future projects with Eminem’s Shady Records feature better—and less ridiculous art.
The late great Notorious B.I.G. brought Cease into the music business as a member of Junior Mafia. With such a heavy cosign, fans were anxious for Cease to drop his 1999 solo album The Wonderful World Of Cease A Leo. What they were not expecting was a grinning and slightly pudgy Cease to appear completely naked on the cover, with two women’s hands extending to cover up his private parts. Perhaps inspired by this unflattering photo, Cease has since gone on to produce fitness videos.
