The Hip-Hop Album Cover That Became Tradition
Charting the childhood photo from Nas' 'Illmatic' to Baby Keem's 'Ca$ino'
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Writing about album cover trends is one of my favorite pastimes for this newsletter. Some styles come and go; others stake their claim; yet very few have become traditions.
In 1994, New York rapper Nas released his debut album, Illmatic, to critical acclaim, defining the genre for years to come. In an article for Pitchfork, Jeff Weiss describes Nas as “the Dylan figure expanding the possibilities and complexity of the form, twisting old fables to match contemporary failings, faithful to tradition but unwilling to submit to orthodoxy.” Along with his lyricism, he also set a visual tone that generations of R&B artists have since repeated. On the cover, we see a photo of the musician as a child overlaid on a New York City street; his eyes lining up perfectly with the horizon. His name sits in large gothic red letters in the top right-hand corner, while the album title is in the bottom left. His next three albums follow the same visual structure: his portrait and city block both age over time.
Many early hip-hop cover art depict the musicians in city settings. Think graffiti-laden sidewalks like on “Walk This Way” by Run-D.M.C. (1986) and N.W.A And The Posse by N.W.A (1987). Yet Nas was the first to combine this stylistic detail with a portrait of himself as a child. Throughout the record packaging, we see photographs of Nas at 20 years old around the Queensbridge Projects (the place that raised him and which is a major character on the LP). These photos would’ve easily fit right in as an album cover, yet the image of his former self speaks much louder, tying back to the journey he raps about on Illmatic.
An aesthetic root of hip-hop is paying homage, whether it’s to another artist who came before or to the city and community that raised you. Out of these many callbacks comes one of the genre’s major lyrical themes: the come-up or the Cinderella story. As Weis writes, “The styles and stories that formed [Nas] fuse into something that withstands outdated slang and popular taste: it is a story of a gifted writer born into squalor, trying to claw his way out of the trap.”
The most recent childhood photo to grace a hip-hop album cover is Baby Keem’s Ca$ino. The rapper, born Hykeem Jamaal Carter Jr., is the younger cousin of Kendrick Lamar (who also shared a polaroid of himself as a kid on the cover of his third album, good kid, m.A.A.d. city). Ca$ino is Keem’s second record and lays out a constellation of personal glimpses into his life. The album name is an ode to growing up in Las Vegas, the documentary series he released as a visual accompaniment is titled after his childhood nickname, “Booman,” and even the album cover is a visual manifestation of his artist moniker. A close-up crop of the rapper as a toddler, accompanied by the familiar parental advisory sticker on R&B covers, enlarged and clumsily arranged.
Rolling Stone’s Mosi Reeves writes about the last song on Ca$ino: “‘No Blame’ turns into a letter to his largely absent mother. ‘I was seven years old, waiting on you in pajamas/You said you would come home, should’ve never made that promise,’ he harmonizes in a broken, sobbing cadence. The theme recalls 2Pac on his 1991 debut, 2Pacalypse Now, which ended with the rapper castigating his mother, Afeni Shakur, as a ‘Part Time Mutha.’”
In 2008, art director Scott Sandler was challenged with drafting the cover for Lil Wayne’s album Tha Carter III. In an interview, the designer reminisces about how everyone knew the rapper was on the precipice of something big (the record would go on to clinch three awards at The Grammys and sell 1 million copies in its first week). “Rap at that time was very serious. Nobody really had much of a sense of humor,” Sandler states. An idea he had to mask Lil Wayne’s tattoos on his baby face was one of many concepts he submitted, which he assumed would get tossed in the trash. Instead, it was chosen for its legendary status, paying homage to Nas’ Illmatic and Biggie’s Ready to Die, yet bringing in a signature of his own. Little did he know, Sandler would set the standard for Wayne’s discography for years to come. The rapper’s childhood photo has since appeared on three of his other records, the most recent on Tha Carter VI (2025).
This album cover tradition now feels like a rite of passage in hip-hop. Everyone from 21 Savage to Killer Mike, 2 Chainz, DaBaby, Drake, and SZA (whose baby tatts directly pay homage to Tha Carter III) has tossed their name in the ring. For a genre that exudes extravagance through cars, diamonds, and parties, as seen in one of hip-hop’s earliest visual trends: the outlandish collage style of the Houston-based creative studio Pen & Pixel, the childhood photo is a quiet moment of reflection.
Find more childhood album covers in hip-hop below, and feel free to share others in the comments!
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Everybody get down! Love that Nas line. Truth. Great observational discourse. BK in tha house!
So many versions but I still prefer the original. The way it implies Nas' corruption stems directly from his environment is a brilliant bit of storytelling