An area where this dichotomy is played out (so to speak), and on full display (ahem) is album artwork. In the hip-hoip world at large, liner notes are in notoriously short supply, and album “art” is arguably similarly scarce…. On the one hand, they may be iconic in their own way, and a lot of the tastelessness is intentional in order to self-identify as hip-hop (or even as “more hip-hop” than the next guy), but on the other hand there isn’t a great deal of precedent for good design.
Logan Walters noticed this imbalance between his aural and visual responses to some of his classic hiphop albums and decided he to do something about it–even if only for himself.
He’s promised to do a few more (and he’s got directions on where to find them when they’re ready), but they’ve already started getting a lot of attention from other people that appreciate hip-hop and balanced and well-designed art.
Invoking (or sampling, as you might say) Blue Note album covers is not something entirely unheard of in hip-hop:
…but mainstream [positive] attention to hip hop album art kind of is. The last one to come to mind is Nikolay Saveliev’s Pop Matters which, while unarguably high art, was also pretty much a mockery of how unartistic the music industry has become. Even drastically lowering the bar on what we’re calling “art”, hip-hop is severely under-represented on Sleeveface, and I had to go back over a year to find any hip-hop bento album covers.
The most serious remixing of hip-hop album covers I could find was done entirely in Lego, which–while awesome–probably says something about this situation.
Definitely see also: Highbrow – Sleevage / Lowbrow – LP Cover Lover
