Week #52 ('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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While I haven’t been doing these posts all year, we’re reached the end of 2020 for my Art Appreciations. I started these posts because I love all kinds of visual media, having studied traditional art in the past and wishing to apply some of this knowledge to the Hip-Hop/music sphere. I don’t know everything about art, but I do know that art, like music, exists on a continuum, taking inspiration from the works and figures that have come before. Understanding where these techniques, mediums, and artistic concepts come from is just as important to me as the musical elements. In these posts I have gotten to speak with many of the artists whose works you have seen often, getting their perspectives and insights into their processes, something I’d never thought I’d get to do by covering their works. Long story short: thank you to all of you amazing artists out there making album art that will define projects for generations to come. Let’s keep up the good work in 2021.

Remember, use this post to follow and subscribe to these artists; they deserve as much recognition as the musicians they collaborate with.

Artist(s): Manuel “Cep” Concepcion

In The Name Of Prodigy, by Flee Lord & Havoc

I’ve been thinking a lot about Prodigy lately, and not just because I knew this album was around the corner. It’s been over three years since he passed, and the more time goes by the more unreal it seems, a truly immortal presence in hip-hop. Ask ANY of these rappers out there in today’s underground about their influences, especially any motherfucker from New York, and Bandana P will be in their mentions. So not only is it fitting that Flee Lord, who got the Prodigy cosign very early on in his career, gets to represent his mentor in supreme fashion, not only is it fitting that Havoc be the one to score the entire project as a dedication to his life-long friend, but it is also fitting that Manuel “Cep” Concepcion be the one to immortalize him in an album cover worthy of his status as a Queensbridge icon. The legendary get-up that P has on in Cep’s piece is a direct call back to Prodigy’s most identifiable outfit: that blood red basketball jersey he wore in the Shook Ones video, emblazoned with “HENNESEY”, being transformed into a regal robe of an angel of death. What looks like a red haze surrounding him has the unsettling consistency of blood, viscous and tangible in the way it hangs on the piece. You know that Prodigy is always coming prepared for anything, packing steel under the sleeve of his robe, because that’s just who he was: the H.N.I.C, the leader, the rap-game Albert Einstein, and the most cold-blooded of any rapper out of his city. I think that, at this point, Prodigy can be considered the patron-saint of all of these brick-slinging, plug-robbing, strapped-up gangstas out there repping New York, so seeing him playing the part on this cover feels right, a reverence and respect being displayed for a figure that is 100% warranted. Rest in Peace to one of Queensbridge’s finest, and peace to Cep for knocking it out of the park.

Cep's Instagram/Cep's Website

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Artist(s): The Amazing Morf

Consume, by Leaf Dog & Farma Beats

A street-artist that I became familiar with from his work on Leaf Dog’s last project, Live from the Balrog Chamber, this new piece he’s got for Leaf’s newest album with Farma Beats is entirely different from everything I’ve seen from the man so far. While his street work is a lot of large bombastic text, his character work is unreal, able to convey personality and attitude through heavy body stylization and an attention to detail that has me thinking of the work Jamie Hewlett does in the context of the Gorillaz. But this piece here is very different, still having that style that is identifiable and entirely engaging, but adding much more dynamism and kinetic energy into the piece than I’m used to seeing from him. I mean, you can see front and center: this dude’s head is exploding, with every little detail of his face and skull comically reacting to what looks like a UFO shooting a laser beam into his cranium. You can see this dude’s ears, teeth, eyeballs, and even his chain that he’s wearing, little touches that in some cases would be gross, but in this the addition of the viscera gives the piece a sense of detail, in a way describing a character like he does in other pieces but doing it through… well the actual “parts” that make them up. I’m loving the washed out dark colors, putting more emphasis on the actions at hand rather than leading the eyes through color, something that takes some active suppression I’m sure from someone of Morf’s background. Check out Morf’s Instagram to see a ton of his work out on the streets, and some of his amazing character work he’s got.

Morf's Instagram

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