The 30 Best Album Covers of 2013

As the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Mosquito or Black Flag's What The...taught us this year, sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover, but as we also learned from albums like Long. Live. A$AP or Mac Miller's Watching Movies With the Sound Off, that's also not always a bad thing. Great album artwork can potentially signify where an artist's head is at when they're creating their album, who they're inspired by, and even what we can expect the music to sound like.

This year, there was a wide range of styles found when celebrating album artwork, with artists taking influence anywhere from Neo-Classicism to Minimalism. Often taking a bare-bones approach with their design, DONDA played heavily into defining 2013's cover art aesthetic, but also don't forget about Lady Gaga's transformation from pop singer to ARTPOP with the help of Jeff Koons, or Kadir Nelson's work on Nothing Was the Same. It was a strong year for album artwork, and as you'll see from The 30 Best Album Covers of 2013, picking the best of that bunch wasn't easy.

Release date: June 11, 2013
Photography: Luiza Sa
Art direction: CSS
Labels: SQE Music

There's a strange, alien undertone to the sprout-like figures that pop up on the cover of CSS' latest album, Planta. Sure, the band themselves are the plant, but the black garb and gangly ostrich necks? Why not an image of resplendence or fertility to go along with their flora-themed title?

Well, the image itself was inspired by a Richard Avedon photo of Audrey Hepburn, according to CSS' lead singer Lovefoxxx. In an interview with Rookie, Lovefoxx also stated that she thinks "it looks like a ginger root!" so the earthy connection is there, but it's still hard to ignore the darker palate of the image. Perhaps, beyond Avedon's influence, it has something to do with the fact that, since their eponymous album in 2005, Cansei de Ser Sexy (the band's full name, to be clear) has only seen their fame wilt, especially in the wake of losing multi-instrumentalist member, Adriano Cintra. But from dirt, ashes, and other dead things, grows new life, and with Planta, CSS makes it known that they won't go quietly into the night. At the very least, you can be sure that they're going to throw a party for themselves.

Release date: January 16, 2013
Art direction: John Stortz
Labels: Carpark Records

It's ironic that plant life would adorn the cover of Toro y Moi's Anything in Return when so much of the album is focused on the fact that the artistic demands of being a touring musician have prevented Chaz Bundick from taking roots anywhere. Maybe, like the throwback aesthetic of the cover art, the album's content is just an expression of desire for a different time-an alternate, brilliantly-colored reality that allows Bundick to balance both his artistry and his personal life in one cohesive existence. Appearing to be removing his glasses and also pulling himself under the covers to sleep, the album art suggests that, for now, this world only exists in Bundick's dreams.

Release date: Nov. 13, 2013
Photography: Stefan Burnett
Art direction: Death Grips
Labels: Third Worlds

As we saw from the NSFW cover for No Love Deep Web, Death Grips isn't afraid to announce their artistic presence in a big or unsettling way. With the Government Plates cover, their approach isn't quite as abrasive but, nevertheless, it still sends a loud and clear message: DEATH. While reinvention seems to be a more prominent theme for the album's music, as the group constantly experiments with and expands possibilities of hip-hop, the cover explores a different idea. Set against a flat, black background, and stamped onto a license plate, the cover emphasizes the band's willingness to confront unsettling inevitability in their sound.

Release date: March 22, 2013
Art direction: Kanye West, DONDA, Joe Perez
Labels: Cash Money, Republic, Young Money Entertainment

DONDA has steadily been making their presence known in the world of album art design this year, and that effort includes Lil Wayne's I Am Not a Human Being II, where Kanye West and his creative team used a red, Silence of the Lambs-esque moth to represent the YMCMB king. When asked about Kanye's artistic process, Lil Wayne said, "he chose the moth butterfly thing because it has so many different stages of life, and it goes through so many forms and changes, and no one can figure it out, and it's always beautiful." For a rapper who has undergone a number of metamorphic changes throughout his career, it couldn't make more sense.

Release date: Aug. 26, 2013
Photography: Kacper Kasprzyk
Art direction: Matthew Williams
Labels: GOOD Music, Def Jam

Big Sean's music is firmly of this millenium, but the cover for his latest album Hall of Fame couldn't be more of a throwback. Though the colors of the photo are vibrant and frenetic, the finer details of it appear grainy and purposefully low-res, as if shot through a video camera that your parents purchased back in '95. Donning the old-school, tinted frames, as well, the Detroit rapper would be a natural fit in a vintage Bad Boy video, or perhaps striding confidently into the club à la Nas or DMX in Belly.

Release date: Aug. 20, 2013
Photography: Justin Hogan
Art direction: Jay West
Labels: A$AP Worldwide, Polo Grounds, RCA

For centuries, one of the highest forms of artistic politics has been portraiture. Whether it's George Washington, Napoleon, or Barack Obama, capturing the mug of any famous figure has been essential both as a means propaganda and posterity. So what treatment would be more fitting for the Trap Lord himself than to get a frame around his face? With Trap Lord-still one of the year's most underrated releases-A$AP Ferg stacked rhymes with the frantic energy of a coked-out bricklayer, throwing together a veritable fortress of sound and lyrics in the process. The album's artwork looks like the first picture you'd see when stepping into this castle, hanging powerfully over the mantle of a roaring fire, or above Ferg's very own golden throne.

Release date: Nov. 11, 2013
Art direction: Jeff Koons, Lady Gaga
Labels: Streamline, Interscope

Though the actual album may have been a flop in a mainstream sense, ARTPOP's cover art remains anything but. Framing herself as a new Venus, Gaga presents a remixed take on Boticelli's The Birth of Venus with the help of contemporary visual artist-superstar, Jeff Koons.

While Boticelli's work presents a certain seductive shyness in its central figure, Gaga's take is a decidedly more modern version of the ideal woman, with looks and gestures that cut more assertively toward the viewer. While looking to the past for influence, Gaga also recognizes her willingness to break away from those ideas, and to reshape and reinvent them in her own image.

On the presence of the blue gazing ball, Koons noted the "aspect of reflection that when you come across something like a gazing ball, it affirms you, it affirms your existence and then from that affirmation, you start to want more. There's a transcendence that takes place." With the gazing ball and the Boticelli combined, Koons provides visual support for Gaga's place in society, not just as a pop culture figure but as a living, breathing work of art.

Release date: Aug. 20, 2013
Photography: Jason Dill
Art direction: Anita Marisa Boriboon, Kunle Martins
Labels: Tan Cressida, Columbia

The Christian cross has been reappropriated a number of times by the Odd Future crew, whether it was tattooed on Tyler, the Creator's forehead for Goblin or standing upside down on both of MellowHype's albums. It again makes an appearance in the L.A. crew's iconography for Earl Sweatshirt's newest album, this time as a full-on crucifix.

Perhaps Earl is making a commentary on his image pre-, during, and post-Samoa-how he is exhorted as a Christ-figure of sorts for all the teenaged, OFWGKTA fan boys who attned his shows across the country. But there's also something tired and worn down about Earl here that we have to pay attention to; at the very least, we should see that he just wants to relax. Fame and a following aren't easy things to manage, but as Earl would be the first to tell, there ain't no rest for the wicked and weary.

Release date: Nov. 18, 2013
Photography: Bill Butterworth
Art direction: Dev Hynes
Labels: Domino

For as long as he's been in the music business, Blood Orange mastermind Dev Hynes has never been the type to be pinned down by labels. With his first project Test Icicles, the British musical polyglot dealt in dance-punk before switching to indie pop, funk, and soul with his next project, Lightspeed Champion.

Now, with Blood Orange and his previous production work for Solange and Sky Ferreira, Hynes is carving out his space in synthy, '80s R&B, diving headfirst into the endeavor with jazzy, heartfelt anthems like "Chosen," and the Michael Jackson tribute jam, "You're Not Good Enough."

However, lying underneath all of Cupid Deluxe's slick sheen is a crucial subtext to the work, exploring the plight of the LGBTQ community in New York. Cupid's artwork, shot by photographer Bill Butterworth, explores these issues by putting the spotlight directly on it, glamorizing a partially-clothed figure whose sex is up for debate. However, while the subject's gender might be unclear, he or she certainly don't seem to have any reservations about it. Standing defiantly in the center of the frame, he or she represents a willingness to stand against gender binaries, refusing to be tied to either a zero or a one. As Dev Hynes has shown us through his music, the ability to recast our image like this is a power that exists in us all.

Release date: June 18, 2013
Photography: Ashley Rose, Karen Meyers, Jim Murton, Eric Altenburger
Art direction: Miller McCormick
Labels: Rostrum Records

The meaning behind the artwork for Mac Miller's Watching Movies With the Sound Off has been confusing to some, and that isn't by accident, according to Miller. In an interview with Clash, Miller said that, "I've been chilling on the real description because it's funny that everyone tries to figure it out. There's the idea that an apple is good for you; I went through this period in life where all I ate was apples, but there's also some Adam and Eve shit."

That clears up both the apple and the cherub-as well as Mac's nudity-but what about the deep red palate of the cover and the filled, flourishing vase? Passion and the Garden of Eden? It's certainly possible. If there's one thing that's clear about it, though, it's that Miller's wide-eyed gaze isn't meant to present him as a deer in the headlights, but rather, as someone who's finally seeing the world for the very first time.

Release date: May 17, 2013
Art direction: Cedric Hervet, Daft Punk, Paul Hahn, Warren Fu
Labels: Daft Life, Columbia

Perhaps a viewing of Daft Punk's Random Access Memories for us to dissect and enjoy.

Release date: Nov. 1, 2013
Photography: Daniel Sannwald
Art direction: M.I.A., Tom Manaton
Labels: N.E.E.T., Interscope

Internet art has become something of a signature for M.I.A., who, quite honestly, should be considered just as much a visual artist as she is a musician. With 2010's MAYA, M.I.A. showed us the suffocating power of the World Wide Web by trapping herself under a fortress of YouTube playback bars and digital bricks. With Matangi, the execution is much simpler, but the questions remain the same: how do we go about presenting ourselves in the 21st century? More importantly, how do we define ourselves? Using what looks like a High Contrast image (hint: hit Shift-Alt-Print Screen on your computer and see what happens), M.I.A.-though removed from Maya's video veil-still remains, in some way, distorted by the culture of the digital age. What else would you expect a selfie from M.I.A. to look like?

Release date: May 31, 2013
Photography: Disclosure
Art direction: Disclosure
Labels: PMR, Island

"Settle" is pretty much the last thing you'll be able to do after hearing the album Settle from the English electronic music duo, Disclosure. Packed with hyper-kinetic acid house jams, with everyone from AlunaGeorge to London Grammar guesting, the album has been highly regarded as one of the year's most vibrant and pulse-pounding releases. And the recording's cover art-a baby picture of the two brothers-seems to reflect that as well.

Tracing their heads with the skittish, ghostly, white Disclosure Face, the artwork hints at the "otherness" that emerges in one's self when they hear Disclosure's jumpy, possessive brand of house. It's as if there's a different person inside, only an outline now, but fully formed once the music hits.

Release date: Oct. 18, 2013
Photography: Isaac Gale
Art direction: Andrea Hyde
Labels: Mom+Pop

A breakthrough work for the Minneapolis synthpop band Polica, Shulamith confronts its listener with a gruesome, almost creepy image: a nude woman with blood running down from her scalp. A number of nasty and complicated associations arise from a picture like this: was there abuse? What type of violence are we to assume from her state?

When the image was released along with the video for the record's lead single, "Tiff," a YouTube description for the video simply framed it as, "A portrait of a woman as her own worst enemy." Nothing is certain about the origins of the violence, whether they came from a broken heart, a troubled mind, or otherwise, but, at the very least, it's remarkable how the artwork allows the woman to stare at you so fiercely, without ever making eye contact.

Release date: April 16, 2013
Photography: Nabil Elderkin
Art direction: Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi
Labels: Wicked Awesome, GOOD, Republic

An explosion always suggests an event, and Kid Cudi's newest album-a hybrid of styles untouched by most others in hip-hop-is no exception. Gilded by an elegant gold frame worthy of the Met, the proportions of the album's scale are only heightened to larger, more dramatic heights. Perhaps the detonation is the precursor to the album's first track, "The Resurrection of Scott Mescudi," or maybe it's meant to symbolize his blast-off in "The Flight of the Moon Man." Whatever the case, with fire and force, Cudi lets us know that something big is happening here, and that we'd best pay attention.

Release date: Jan. 29, 2013
Art direction: Local Native
Labels: Infectious, Frenchkiss Records

The music of L.A. psych-folkers Local Natives can be described in a number of different ways, and many of them suggest the ease with which one can drift or float away while listening to the band's soft, intricately-woven melodies. Their latest album Hummingbird supports this feeling in both its title and aesthetic. Showing members of the band hanging off of a sidewalk in the sky, the cover reinforces the cool, sunny-day atmosphere of their sound, and while it stays clear of becoming a full-on acid trip, Hummingbird at least gives us a clue to what it's like to be high in the sky.

Release date: Jan. 15, 2013
Photography: Phil Knott
Art direction: Joe Perez
Labels: A$AP Worldwide, Polo Grounds, RCA

With A$AP Rocky's mixtape Live. Love. A$AP. he delivered a simple message of non-chalant defiance, finishing a blunt in front of the American flag via a French inhale. However, his debut album Long. Live. A$AP. sets a decidedly different tone with artwork, highlighting paranoia, fractured identity, and the difficulties of fame in modern America. While A$AP was previously indifferent to the flag with Live. Love., one year and a hype cycle later, he's now wrapped up in it, perhaps trying to shield himself from the power-hungry culture vultures circling overhead. As Rocky says on "Suddenly," the closing song of the album, "I swear this famous shit happened overnight...All I see is fake love, smiles, and overbites." With Long.Live, A$AP reminds us of the importance of keeping our allies close.

Release date: Oct. 4, 2013
Photography: Jed DeMoss
Art direction: Matt De Jong
Labels: Other People, Matador

With Psychic, the downtempo partnership of Darkside (Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington), released a masterpiece of subterranean power that captivated listeners through its subtle, hypnotic murmurs. The album cover possesses the same mutant qualities of their work, displaying a cerebral blob that reflects a neon-fired sign reading: PSYCHIC. It does look brain-like in a way, similar to Tesla ball with its touch-activated neurons, and the image works well with the sparse, dimly-lit aesthetic of the album. But with its strange disfigurations and lighting, there's also something to be suspicious of or unsettled by with this cover. As for its telekinetic capabilities, no one could say, but remember that Metroids and other aliens aren't always the most likely of villains either.

Release date: Feb. 26, 2013
Photography: Jody Rogac
Art direction: Thunderhorse
Labels: Software

Standing on its own, the cover for Autre Ne Veut's latest album Anxiety is likely confusing to most. What are we to make of this empty frame? The darkness? The two men standing off to the side? Without some context, not much, to be honest. But when you uncover the full story surrounding Arthur Ashin's newest project, you actually discover that it's a clever wink to copyright laws, with Ashin and his label giving a sly nod to the history surrounding Edvard Munch's The Scream.

Originally, the painting inside the frame was Munch's most famous work, and served as a perfect analog to the title of Ashin's album. Unfortunately, the legal powers that be stripped the canvas, and left Ashin only with a blank, wooden border. But if there was ever a response to give regarding what happened to The Scream, Ashin's label Software replied to inquiries about the altered cover artwork by simply saying: "The painting was stolen."

Release date: June 18, 2013
Photography: Kanye West, Virgil Abloh, Matthew Williams, Justin Saunders
Art direction: Joe Perez
Labels: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam

All of the mystery and anticipation that swirled around Yeezus this past summer was only further exaggerated when Kanye revealed its empty, nearly featureless album artwork. Questions rose when the cover was revealed, with most fans wondering what they were supposed to do with it and if it meant that Kanye had finally fallen completely off of his rocker. After all, how does a guy go from having George Condo design his album cover to this?

However, by providing us with little more than a blank CD, Kanye subverts his own celebrity by barely admitting that there's even an album being released. What distinguishes this work from any regular CD you could pick up at Best Buy? Aside from the stark, red tape pressed onto the front, not much. It's a coy refusal on West's part to acknowledge the event that his fame has created. Instead of answering the hype and the rumor mills with a grandly-detailed cover, he instead changes the entire conversation by giving us a bare-bones West original.

Release date: Nov. 5, 2013
Photography: Kevin Mazur
Art direction: Mike Saputo
Labels: Aftermath, Shady, Interscope

When the video for "Berzerk" dropped, Eminem made it clear that he was ready to take hip-hop back to its embryonic stage; to a time when breakbeats and the Beastie Boys ruled the scene. However, he wasn't just trying to take the genre back to its roots. With the album cover for The Marshall Mathers LP 2, Em essentially told everyone that he was going to be returning to his own starting point as well. Depicting his teenage home, MMLP2 offers a slightly older, more dilapidated version of the same structure that covered its spiritual predecessor, The Marshall Mathers LP.

The home should serve a reflection of Eminem for anyone who knows the up-and-down saga that the Detroit rapper has been the center of for the past decade. However, while they both may be worse for wear, you can't argue with one thing: they're also still standing.

Release date: Aug. 20, 2013
Photography: Marc Rimmer
Art direction: Marc Rimmer
Labels: Arbutus Records, Full Time Hobby, Flemish Eye

Braids employs the hypnotic power of the spherical form to make a statement for their newest album Flourish // Perish, perhaps even borrowing from the Japanese manga series Gantz to do so. Created by Montreal-based photographe, Marc Rimmer, the cover's black bubble connotes a number of different possibilities whether relating to falling ink, new worlds, or black holes.

Likewise, its presence, as it hovers silently over an undisturbed body of water, is clearly alien, inviting us to form our own assumptions as to its meaning. Is this orb the perishing agent, some sort of weapon of mass destruction? Is there a fully formed universe existing within this sphere that we don't know about? Either way, there's a direction being implied here-good or bad-that invites us to follow in its path. The album will take us the rest of the way.

Release date: April 2, 2013
Photography: Eddy Tekeli
Art direction: Mark Ryden (artist), Tyler, The Creator
Labels: Odd Future, RED, Sony

Fame-hating has become something of a theme of 21st century malaise, and like Kanye, Drake, or Eminem, Tyler, the Creator is a figure who, since his name was first carried away in a flood of Internet buzz, has despised and detested the construct of celebrity in modern-day America. He's certainly made no secret of it in any of his albums, setting his debut effort Goblin in his therapist's office, and letting the raps essentially act as a dialogue between himself and the man who is supposed to help him make sense of his place as a public figure.

With Wolf, this conflict is further elaborated in the album's cover art, which showcases Tyler's desire to return to his youth, and a simpler, more idyllic time of his life. The deluxe version of the album further illustrates this longing, enlisting the neo-surrealist painter Mark Ryden to give Tyler the childhood he was never able to have.

Release date: Oct. 8, 2013
Photography: Fabien Montique
Art direction: Capricorn Clark, Pusha T, DONDA
Labels: G.O.O.D. Music, Def Jam

In an interview with Fader about the cover for his latest album, My Name Is My Name, Virginia coke-rap kingpin Pusha T stated that, "[Capricorn Clark and I] came up with all these kinds of ideas, like a thumbprint. We were attracted to images that were just as personal as the title. Stark and minimal were the key words...Then [Kanye] added his own genius to it. Our idea of a thumbprint turned into the barcode."

Cocaine can't be scanned at a grocery store check-out, but the idea of commoditization and commerce in the 21st century certainly remains true to Pusha's reputation as a hustler, and the stark, black-and-white layout of the image further emphasizes the raw, back-to-basics appeal of his style. By using a barcode as a means of personal identification, Pusha, Kanye, and Clark put forth new ideas on defining identity in the digital world. The thumbprint that once corresponded to your skin may now belong to a number, but whatever it is, your name will still always be yours.

Release date: March 18, 2013
Art direction: Pierre Le Ny, Daniel Sannwald (photographer)
Labels: Green United Music

Ignore the blatant Hellraiser similarities for a minute and consider Woodkid's album The Golden Age for its formal qualities. It's the type of mask that only an artist with a taste for the baroque could love, so minutely detailed and ornate that it's positively stifling. Though the ornamental pop musician is already an accomplished visual artist in his own right, Woodkid decided that bringing on Daniel Sannwald (photographer and recently director for John Legend and M.I.A videos) for the album cover's creation wouldn't hurt. And he was certainly right. It takes an artist of admirable discipline to give up control in an area where they excel, so credit Woodkid for making the tough decision to give Sannwald the nod for this cover. The result is a work that manages to imply a new vision of the future and a modernized definition to what's truly golden.

Release date: June 12, 2013
Photography: Lygia Clark
Art direction: Sarah Hopper
Labels: XL

Using a photo from Lygia Clark's 1967 "Sensory Masks" series, Sigur Ros added an aura of sinister ominousness to Kveikur, a pulsing, meditative work of industrial rock and shoegaze influences. The album is the Icelandic band's darkest effort to date, and with a cover like this, hardly anyone should've been surprised.

Over the years, Sigur Ros has crafted their image on imaginary tongues and cold, Scandinavian appeal. Clark's photo, featuring a young boy wearing one of Clark's hand-crafted hoods, gives a malevolent feel to the album's sound, painting it as the devil on your shoulder or the man who lurks in the background behind you. Set against an abyssal, black backdrop, the image is both disconcerting and criminally claustrophobic.

Release date: Sep. 24, 2013
Art direction: Drake, Kadir Nelson (artist)
Labels: OVO Sound, Young Money, Cash Money, Republic

Much was made of Nothing Was the Same's artwork at the time of its release, with most fans expressing some sort of confoundment or frustration with the cover. Sure, the baby theme has been done in hip-hop before-whether it's Illmatic, Ready to Die, or Tha Carter III-but there seemed to be something so intentionally soft and so unmistakeably Drake about this rendering that fans couldn't help but be a little jarred.

In a way, Drake almost seemed to be parodying himself. Did he really have to make himself look so nonthreatening? Why did his blue-sky background have to be so gentle and unassertive? However, Drizzy-who has never been afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve-called this album a throwback to his life as a child, saying that Nothing Was the Same allowed him to reconnect with his youth. Said Drake, "It's a child version of myself staring at myself now. Sometimes when I try and think back on this journey, it's so hard to pinpoint all of these moments and it gets foggy. And what that album art is to me is, like, this is my most clean, concise thoughts from now and my best recollection of then. That's really what that cover's about." Looks like clear skies to us, Aubrey.

Release date: May 17, 2013
Photography: Bohyun Yoon
Art direction: Bohyun Yoon
Labels: 4AD

Taken from the work of the Viriginia-based Korean artist, Bohyun Yoon, the National send a strong message with Trouble Will Find Me. Specifically, the cover depicts the idea that when we're looking for trouble, we often only have to look in ourselves to find it. In Yoon's work, "Fragmentation," the photograph used here was meant to explicate the depersonalized body and how modern science and fashion have enabled people to partially or fully dissociate themselves from their physical identities. The National's use of the work describes how these problems manifest, putting the mirror on ourselves to reveal where our appetites for plastic surgery or a new wardrobe come from. The black and white color adds a poignancy to the work, sharpening the details of the mirror to make the woman's reflection that much clearer to herself.

Release date: Oct. 28, 2013
Photography: Caroline Robert, Korey Richey
Art direction: Caroline Robert
Labels: Merge, Sonovox

Throughout all of Arcade Fire's latest, critically-acclaimed album, Reflektor, the Canadian indie ensemble is constantly making a play at grand scale in some form or another, treating their audience to ballads of zealous length and lyricism time and time again throughout the record. And the album artwork-a mixture of Greek and Haitian influences-clearly displays the band's intent to become something bigger than themselves.

Framing Auguste Rodin's Orphée et Eurydice within a silver halo and a starry sky, the band adds a sense of cosmic importance to the work that art director Caroline Robert corroborates with her explanation of the band's creative process. Robert says, "the band fell in love with Rodin's sculpture...Orpheus' myth inspired them while writing some of their songs. They were also talking a lot about the influence of Caribbean culture on their music and their desire to bring back carnival energy into live performances. They wanted to create a clash between those two worlds: super classic and beautiful (Rodin's sculpure, black and white) with raw and spontaneous (Haitian raw art, voodoo, carnival, textures, and colors)." Much in the way that Reflektor's sound refuses to be held down, so too does the tension existing in its artwork.

Release date: Sep. 9, 2013
Photography: Jenna Pinch
Art direction: DONDA, Kanye West
Labels: Def Jam

It's hard to call two, hulking Cuban links "minimal," but how else can you describe the cover of 2 Chainz's latest album B.O.A.T.S. II: Me Time when they manage to so perfectly distill the rapper into one, neat image? Moreover, what's most important about the chains is how they're able to capture more than just 2 Chainz's taste for gold necklaces.

The links are representative of hip-hop's possession obsession, and the eternal thirst for material power that has come to define the genre for over a decade. Designed by Kanye West, the cover is a bold finishing touch on the minimalist aesthetic that West pushed for with 808s and Heartbreak in 2008 and earlier this year with Yeezus.

For 2 Chainz, there was no question that Kanye would be the one to set the artistic tone for his newest work. On collaborating with West's creative team DONDA to produce the year's best album cover, 2 Chainz said, "They were the first people I thought of. Their team is unprecedented. Expect next level imagery, sonics and stage performance. This is curated art. The Louvre of rap." *Drops mic*