Week #27 ('20) Art Appreciation
Welcome to my weekly Art Appreciation post, where I provide a list of some amazing album covers, single art, and random art that have come out within the past week. I’ll give you the artist/photographer/painter/magician’s name, as well as any social media or websites where you can go and check out more of their work. Click here to go back and see some other Art Appreciation posts.
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Some of my favorite album/single covers are instances where an artist will take existing paintings from centuries ago and repurpose them to fit some new ideas and to align them to a new artist’s image. There have been a few high-profile examples throughout the years, but many times it’s the members of underground hip-hop that come with these beauties. You take these paintings, add cool little symbols and details that the musicians identify with, and you get something that has both an arcane and a fresh feel to it. I took an Art History course when I was a kid, and it always excites me seeing a painting that I’ve come to love used in such a way; it’s a lot like hearing an old Jazz or Motown cut being sampled in a modern hip-hop setting, very satisfying.
Remember, use this post to follow and subscribe to these artists; they deserve as much recognition as the musicians they are attached to.
Artist(s): Huey P.
Alter Ego: Fleeigo Delgado, by Flee Lord
Flee Lord is probably one of the best examples of artists who often use paintings in their work. Gets Greater Later and Hand Me My Flowers are two of my favorite pieces he’s utilized as his covers, but this newest piece from his Alter Ego: Fleeigo Delgado project might be my new favorite. Flee loves having images like snakes, doves, and, as a nod to one of his most identifiable pieces of fashion sold through his Loyalty®Death shop, ski masks. The central figure is ski-masked up naturally, pointing a six-shooter right at our smiling mugs, holding out the ace of spades to show us how shitty our luck is to cross this motherfucker. This one ranks so highly for me because of the sweet mirroring Huey P. does on the shooter; he flips it along both axes to give it the look of a playing card, something I’ve personally never seen before, made even harder by the bodies of both the main and mirrored figure being made up of different paintings, with the first being some ethereal Jesus and Mary mural, an the second being the famous Caravaggio painting Judith Beheading Holofernes, a personal favorite of mine. Those two paintings, backdropped by the intense Crusades-esque battle scene, make a great piece of album art with lots of defining elements.
Huey P.’s Instagram
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Artist(s): Huey P.
Keep Goin, by G4 JAG & DirtyDiggs
While not nearly as detailed as his other piece that shows up in this week’s Art Appreciation, this piece Huey P. did for G4 JAG’s latest project with DirtyDiggs is no less symbolic to the artist in question. Much like Flee Lord’s ski-mask, G4 JAG is drawn to the look of the plague doctor mask, common safety equipment for doctors who worked during many outbreaks of disease throughout history. What does this mean in the context of G4 JAG’s music? Maybe it could be as simple as his rhymes and voice being sick as fuck and we need to protect ourselves; maybe it has a more profound meaning by protecting himself from the bullshit and sicknesses of the world, with music being his real shield and medicine. Regardless of what it means, it’s hard as fuck. I love the image of the baby writing like legit scripture, like JAG saying he’s been spitting hot rhymes since a toddler, all seen through the lens of this broken foreground that looks like a cloudy eye, giving the picture this first-person view where us observers are witnessing the baby write fire.
Huey P.’s Instagram
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Artist(s): Manuel “Cep” Concepcion
Director’s Cut: Scene Two, by Ransom & Nicholas Craven
(Click on the album cover to see the back cover of this project)
This one right here, this newest Cep art, is some fascinating shit. This is a re-release of Scene Two from Ran and Craven, and to celebrate they teamed up with the brilliant Cep to put a new spin on the album’s face. I am absolutely in love with this cover, and I think it starts with something simple yet totally enamoring: those honeycomb patterns. I love both the red and orange patterns that have this rusty and worn feel to them, like a dilapidated future look, as well at the empty honeycomb spaces on Ran’s head. While none of the movies referenced in the tracklist are necessarily sci-fi flicks, I love how Cep was still able to infuse that part of cinema into the project. We still have the bee and hook from the initial cover (done by Huey P. coincidentally), but Cep has added a sweet portrait of a woman done in a convincing pop-art style; it doubles down on the horror angle that the original was going for by sticking that hook through the eye. The back cover is one of the best I’ve ever seen, with the genius idea of creating the tracklist (which is named after a long list of legendary movies) in the stylings of the original movie’s poster fonts. It’s a super creative design choice, and gives the record so much more character and uniqueness. Again, Cep has hit it out of the park with this cover, and I’m looking forward to what he has in the future.
