From Malcolm X to ‘reality rap’: Decoding hip-hop album art

The intersection of political commentary and hip-hop music is a tradition dating back decades, kicking off with 1982’s “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. The genre’s heyday spanned the 1990s in an era when album artwork was a significant part of music discovery. Before streaming came to dominate the modern music ecosystem, fans would flock to record stores to flip through the latest releases. While CDs might now be relegated to a single stand inside a supermarket, for previous generations, record stores comprised a path to finding new music, a bit like searching through Spotify or Apple Music today. Album covers were an important part of this experience. And in the world of hip-hop, they have long been used to send messages about culture, politics and the artists’ general worldview. Here, Al Jazeera decodes eight album covers from the peak era of political hip-hop and explains the images and symbols used on each. Gang Starr, Daily Operation (1992) Eyebrow cuts: Pictured in the foreground on this cover of Daily Operation is Guru, who along with DJ Premier, forms the hip-hop duo, Gang Starr. The cuts shaved out of Guru’s eyebrows reflect an expression of Black culture that...