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The 100 Best Album Covers of All Time

From biggie to beyoncé to bad bunny, from nirvana to nas to neil young, this is the album art that changed the way we see music.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHEW COOLEY

The album is the best invention of the past century, hands down — but the music isn’t the whole story. The album cover has been a cultural obsession as long as albums have. Ever since 12-inch vinyl records took off in the 1950s, packaged in cardboard sleeves, musicians have been fascinated by the art that goes on those covers, and so have fans. When the Beatles revolutionized the game with the cover of Sgt. Pepper , in 1967, it became a way to make a visual statement about where the music comes from and why it matters. But the art of the album cover just keeps evolving.

So this is our massive celebration of that art: the 100 best album covers ever, from Biggie to Beyoncé to Bad Bunny, from Nirvana to Nas to Neil Young, from SZA to Sabbath to the Sex Pistols. We’ve got rap, country, jazz, prog, metal, reggae, flamenco, funk, goth, hippie psychedelia, hardcore punk. But all these albums have a unique look to go with the sound. The most unforgettable covers become part of the music — how many Pink Floyd fans have gotten their minds blown staring at the prism on the cover of Dark Side of the Moon , after using it to roll up their smoking materials?

What makes an album cover a classic? Sometimes it’s a portrait of the artist — think of the Beatles crossing the street, or Carole King in Laurel Canyon with her cat. Others go for iconic, semi-abstract images, like Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, or My Bloody Valentine. Some artists make a statement about where they’re from, whether it’s R.E.M. repping the South with kudzu or Ol’ Dirty Bastard flashing his food-stamps card to salute the Brooklyn Zoo.

Many of these covers come from legendary photographers, designers, and artists, like Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Storm Thorgerson, Raymond Pettibon, and Peter Saville. Some have cosmic symbolism for fans to decode; others go for star power. But they’re all classic images that have become a crucial part of music history. And they all show why there’s no end to the world’s long-running love affair with albums.

CONTRIBUTORS: David Browne , Jon Dolan , Suzy Exposito , Andy Greene , Kory Grow , Maya Georgi , Maura Johnston , Gabrielle Macafee , Angie Martoccio , Mosi Reeves , Rob Sheffield , Hank Shteamer , Simon Vozick-Levinson , Alison Weinflash , Christopher Weingarten

From Rolling Stone US

Spinal Tap, ‘Smell the Glove’

There was no easy way to discuss “the issue with the cover” of (totally fictitious heavy-metal band) Spinal Tap’s (nonexistent) 1982 album, Smell the Glove, as recounted in a scene from the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap: “You put a greased, naked woman on all fours, with a dog collar around her neck and a leash, and a man’s arm extended out up to here holding onto the leash, and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it,” artist-relations rep Bobbi Flekman (Fran Drescher) says. “You don’t find that offensive?” Well, somebody did, so Spinal Tap ended up with an all-black cover. The band members equivocated it by saying it looked like black leather, a black mirror, death, and mourning. Then Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) got it: “There’s something about this that’s so black, it’s like, ‘How much more black could this be?’ And the answer is, ‘None. None more black.’” The joke manifested itself in real life with Spinal Tap’s soundtrack album, a punk band called None More Black, and “Black Albums” from Metallica, Jay-Z, Prince, the Damned, and many others. Plus, Spinal Tap eventually released their original album cover, albeit toned down a little, years later on the sleeve of their single “Bitch School.” —K.G.

Grateful Dead, ‘Europe 72’

Together or separately, the San Francisco artists Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse made sure that album art for the Grateful Dead was as trippy (1971’s Grateful Dead) or earthy (Workingman’s Dead) as the music inside. Their visuals for the band’s live triple album are among the simplest in Dead album history. The big, clumsy foot about to stomp on Europe is a witty metaphor for the Dead’s wild-eyed series of shows on that continent, and the “fool” smashing an ice-cream cone into his forehead on the back cover is just goofy Dead fun. (It may also be connected to a tale in drummer Bill Kreutzmann’s memoir about the band dumping some ice cream onto an annoying fan.) Even in the land of the Dead, where visual and musical indulgence could rule, Kelley and Mouse realized that sometimes, less is more. —D.B.

Lil Yachty, ‘Lil Boat’

The cover of Lil Yachty’s debut mixtape, Lil Boat, finds the rapper clad in overalls, standing in a small boat in the middle of the ocean. The collage is framed by a red border printed with the numbers 33.7750° N 84.3900° W — coordinates for the Five Points neighborhood in downtown Atlanta — marking the then-18-year-old rap vocalist as the latest manifestation of the city’s fast-moving and highly influential scene. Mihailo Andic, who designed Lil Boat using a photograph provided by Yachty’s management, drew inspiration from Tumblr. “I thought it’d be a great idea to pitch a cover to his management team: Yachty, on a boat, in the middle of nowhere,” he told Green Label in 2016. “My whole style uses retouching and superimposing photos to make them look as one.” —M.R.

Public Image Ltd, ‘Metal Box’

“We were turned on by the idea that it would be difficult to open the can and get the records out,” Public Image Ltd guitarist Keith Levene told author Simon Reynolds in Rip It Up and Start Again. The post-punk pioneers were already blowing apart rock music with their long, repetitive, often improvisatory songs, and Metal Box rethought the album format itself — three 45 rpm LPs to be treated like 12-inch disco singles, all annoyingly crammed into an unwieldy canister. “With Metal Box, the cover came first, both mentally and physically,” frontman John Lydon told Classic Rock. “We spent most of the advance on it, so making Metal Box presented us with a real challenge because we didn’t have any money left for recording sessions.” —C.W.

Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Punisher’

Phoebe Bridgers’ excellent pandemic-era album has a cover that represents everything we were feeling at the time: fear, loneliness, heartbreak, and the secret wish for extraterrestrials to scoop you up into the sky and get you the hell out of here. Bridgers and photographer Olof Grind took a 24-hour road trip through the California desert, scouting for a location. “I always love a good adventure while shooting, and driving out in a pitch-black desert at 3 a.m. on dirt roads definitely added to my excitement,” Grind said. Bridgers made the skeleton suit her signature look, wearing it on the entire Punisher album cycle and tour. And it’s still impossible not to think of Grind’s image when you listen to songs like the gorgeously devastating “Moon Song” and the strangely romantic “Garden Song.” —A.M.

Offset, ‘Set It Off’

Designed and art-directed by Amber Park, the cover image for Offset’s Set It Off shows the Atlanta rapper tumbling through the sky as the world explodes around him. The image represents modern rap’s shift toward Wagnerian-size drama, with Offset as another kind of heroic survivor, outlasting and overcoming his many controversies. He wears sequined socks and gold gloves, which nod toward his fascination with Thriller-era Michael Jackson. And the image is constructed upside down, making it appear like he’s falling into the sky, not out of it. “I wanted it to be an art piece,” he told Our Generation Music. “It’s like I’m falling down but I’m going up.” —M.R.

Slayer, ‘Reign in Blood’

Just how do you illustrate lyrics like “Raining blood from a lacerated sky/Bleeding its horror, creating my structure/Now, I shall reign in blood”? Slayer producer and label head Rick Rubin turned to political cartoonist Larry Carroll, who tapped into his inner Hieronymus Bosch to create a mixed-media representation of hell with a goatlike deity, decapitated heads, and murderous black angels. “If I remember correctly, [Slayer] didn’t like the cover I did for Reign in Blood at first,” Carroll told Revolver in 2010. “But then someone in the band showed it to their mother, and their mother thought it was disgusting, so they knew they were onto something.” Carroll subsequently created similar hellscapes for Slayer’s South of Heaven, Seasons in the Abyss, and Christ Illusion albums, producing some of the scariest covers in music. —K.G.

Slint, ‘Spiderland’

The members of Slint were just teenagers when they came together in drummer Britt Walford’s Louisville,Kentucky, basement to make the eerily expansive indie rock they’d capture on their epochal 1991 sophomore album, Spiderland. That mix of youthful exuberance and youthful aloneness comes through in the album’s black-and-white cover, which shows them smilingly treading water in a local quarry. The photo was taken by their friend Will Oldham, who’d soon be making his own name with Palace Brothers and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. “We’re just all being youthful and happy,” guitarist Dave Pajo told Rolling Stone’s Hank Shteamer years later, describing the band’s attitude at the time. “When you’re younger, everything is so life-and-death and huge.” —J.D.

Lauryn Hill, ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’

The wood carving at the center of Lauryn Hill’s only official studio album to date is both inspired by artwork for the Wailers’ 1973 album Burnin’ and by the album title itself. “She already had some great ideas that were inspired by the album title,” Columbia art director Erwin Gorostiza told Okayplayer in 2021. The two developed a plan to arrange a photo shoot at Hill’s alma mater, Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey. After photographer Eric Johnson snapped images of her, they decided to select one of them as source material for an illustration that resembles something made by a wayward, “miseducated” student on a school desk. The result vividly reflects Hill’s rustic melding of hip-hop, R&B, and reggae sounds, and her journey to find clarity in a world riven by relationships and desire. —M.R.

Big Brother and the Holding Company, ‘Cheap Thrills’

Counterculture cartoonist Robert “R.” Crumb drew the cover for the 1967 debut by Big Brother and the Holding Company, a psychedelic comic strip that tells the album’s story in each of its songs. The artist laid down the cover after watching the band from backstage at San Francisco’s Carousel Ballroom: “He really wasn’t into our music, but it didn’t matter,” drummer Dave Getz recalled. It really didn’t: Crumb still captured the wild, woolly spirit of Janis Joplin and her bandmates, even if he’d intended for what became the front cover to serve as its back sleeve. —M.J.

Ani DiFranco, ‘Up Up Up Up Up Up’

Modern folk-music icon Ani DiFranco built her enduring success on a mix of anti-capitalist commitment, aesthetic ingenuity, DIY community, and her electric charisma. You can see all of those elements in the multidimensional cover image for her 1999 album. It’s a statement of playful substance over predictable image, but even with her face pointed to the ground she still completely commands your attention. The cover photo was taken by her friend and longtime manager Scot Fisher, who helped DiFranco found the Buffalo, New York-based label Righteous Babe. “We were a mom-and-pop operation,” she recalled in a 2016 interview. “Scot was the photographer and the dude who answered the phone, and I was the graphic designer who would paint the album covers.” —J.D. 

Silkk the Shocker, ‘Charge It 2 Da Game’

The garish, maximalist, larger-than-life album covers of Pen & Pixel defined the late-Nineties CD era, when Southern rap labels like No Limit, Cash Money, and Suave House began to topple the East Coast/West Coast monopoly. Brothers Aaron and Shawn Brauch covered hundreds of album covers with their Photoshop wonderlands of luxury cars, sparkling gems, and bottles of champagne. The cover of Silkk the Shocker’s second album — jeweled lettering, gleaming pinky ring, skewed perspective, gold “Ghetto Express” card — is a classic of the form. “The longer you hold that CD cover in your hand, the more possession-oriented you become,” Shawn told Red Bull. “People would comment later, ‘Yeah, man, the album wack, but the artwork was cool.’ I was like, ‘Well, that’s my job done, right?’” —C.W.

Neil Young, ‘On the Beach’

“Album covers are very important to me,” Neil Young wrote in his 2012 memoir, Waging Heavy Peace. “They put a face on the nature of the project.” This is especially true of 1974’s On the Beach, Young’s devastating rumination on Watergate, the recent breakup of his marriage, his recent albums’ commercial failure, and the overall dissolution of the Sixties dream. It’s all evident on the cover, where he’s seen standing on the Santa Monica shore, his back turned away from the camera. The tail light of a 1959 Cadillac emerges from the sand, surrounded by gaudy yellow patio furniture. The headline from a local L.A. paper reads “Sen. Buckley Calls for Nixon to Resign.” Young spontaneously purchased the items with art director Gary Burden while stoned on “dynamite” weed. —A.M.

Devo, ‘Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!’

“What we focused on was inane, mundane, dumb, mass stuff,” said Devo’s Gerald Casale to NBC. “We liked to go to Kmart and Gold Circle because it had all this discount stuff. That’s when I found, in an aisle of discontinued sports goods, the Chi Chi Rodriguez golf-ball package.” For its debut, the band wanted to use the image of the flamboyant golfer they found on a $1.99 box of balls; however, Warner Bros. lawyers intervened. They quickly found a composite photo of four U.S. presidents that Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh called “perfectly hideous” and had it airbrushed onto Rodriguez’s face. —C.W.

Frank Ocean, ‘Blonde’

The now-iconic photograph of Frank Ocean in the shower as he cups his hand over his face, his hair dyed in lime green, was the result of a lengthy 2015 collaboration between him and German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. The image plays to both men’s interest in otherness, not only as a sign of queer identity, but also as a method of presenting a distinctly iconoclastic yet public self. Ocean and Tillmans were brought together for a photo shoot by the fashion magazine Fantastic Man. Blonde introduced Tillmans, who had been documenting underground culture since the Eighties, to a new generation. It also introduced a defining image of the singer, one both invitingly mysterious and alluringly unknowable. —M.R.

Minor Threat, ‘Minor Threat’

Minor Threat epitomized American hardcore punk at its most fiercely independent. You see that spirit in the classic image of singer Ian MacKaye’s brother Alec sleeping on the steps of Dischord House, where so many of the D.C. punk kids lived and where the band ran their label. Alec’s shaved head, his scuffed work boots, his rumpled clothes, his folded arms, his punked-out exhaustion — it summed up the whole ethos of Minor Threat. The image has been a symbol of DIY realness ever since, inspiring many tributes, most famously the cover of Rancid’s 1995 …And Out Come the Wolves. No wonder corporate America wanted a piece — Nike tried to appropriate it for their bizarre 2005 “Major Threat” ad campaign, until public outrage shut it down. —R.S.

Jay-Z, ‘The Blueprint’

For The Blueprint, Jay-Z turned to Jonathan Mannion, a photographer who had shot all of Jay’s covers since his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt. Mannion took inspiration from Jocelyn Bain Hogg, a British photographer who snapped South London gangster Dave Courtney giving a lecture at Oxford Union, for his book The Firm. Mannion’s shot replicates the aerial framing, finding Jay-Z looking away from the camera, holding court over a group of minions only identified by their shoes. Designer Jason Noto of Def Jam’s in-house creative department the Drawing Board cast the entire image in faded blues and grays. In 2021, Jay sued Mannion over prints the photographer sold from their many sessions. The two settled out of court in 2023. —M.R.

Taylor Swift, ‘Folklore’

Taylor Swift stepped back from her songs on her eighth album: “I found myself not only writing my own stories, but also writing about or from the perspective of people I’ve never met, people I’ve known, or those I wish I hadn’t,” she posted upon Folklore’s release in 2020. Its striking monochromatic cover — a departure from the candy-coated Lover front, and the first collaboration between Swift and photographer Beth Garrabrant — is similarly situated in the wide world, with the coat-clad singer seeming tiny amid mist-cloaked trees and mossy terrain, gazing upward with a pondering expression. —M.J.   

Shakira, ‘Dónde Están los Ladrones?’

After wrapping up her 1997 Pies Descalzos Tour, Shakira landed in Bogotá, Columbia, to discover her briefcase had been stolen … and in it, the songs she’d written for her next album. She’d decidedly named her 1998 record “Dónde Están los Ladrones?” or “Where Are the Thieves?” — and conceptualized the theft as an allegory for thefts of all kinds, including that of Columbia by corrupt politicians, drug lords, and paramilitaries, during what’s since been described as the “Dirty Wars.” Shot against a statement hot pink, Shakira posed for her album cover donning edgy purple braids, with extended dirt-covered palms. “The dirty hands represent the shared guilt,” she said of her cover. “No one is completely clean.… In the end, we are all accomplices.” —S.E.

King Crimson, ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’

King Crimson knew they were onto something big when they pieced together “21st Century Schizoid Man,” the snarling, sweeping portrait of an unraveling collective consciousness that would open their 1969 debut LP. And when artist Barry Godber dropped by London’s Wessex Studios to show them the cover painting that lyricist Peter Sinfield had commissioned, they knew they’d found the perfect visual counterpart. “This fucking face screamed up from the floor, and what it said to us was ‘schizoid man’ — the very track we’d been working on,” bassist-vocalist Greg Lake later recalled. Pairing the image with lyrics like “Blood rack, barbed wire/Politicians’ funeral pyre/Innocents raped with napalm fire,” it’s hardly a leap to imagine the cover figure looking on in horror at the atrocities the song describes. —H.S.

Weyes Blood, ‘Titanic Rising’

On the cover of Titanic Rising, Natalie Mering — the California singer-songwriter who records as Weyes Blood — appears inside an eerie deep-sea installation, hovering between a brass bed and a white wicker desk, with posters adorning the walls. The image perfectly captures the themes of Titanic Rising: millennial doom, the climate crisis, the isolation of technology, and water itself. “This bullshit initiation into culture — for most young people in the Westernized world, it’s their bedroom,” she told Rolling Stone. “They hang up posters of their favorite celebrities and their favorite movies, and they formulate these ideas about life and what life should be like, and what they want. And it’s all an incubation of capitalist bullshit. But it’s still very sacred.” —A.M.

Lil Wayne, ‘Tha Carter III’

“I’m going to be so honest with you: I don’t know Tha Carter III, Tha Carter II, Tha Carter One from Tha Carter IV. And that’s just my God’s honest truth,” Lil Wayne told RS last year. “I believe that [God] blessed me with this amazing mind, but would not give [me] an amazing memory to remember this amazing shit.” Fair enough. But the cover of Tha Carter III, Wayne’s best album, is unforgettable. Rappers have made iconic album artwork using baby photos before — think Ready to Die, Illmatic — but Wayne took it a step further, giving Baby Weezy a diamond pinky ring and some facial ink, for an image that summed up the unstoppable, no-fucks-given charm that made him a superstar. “We wanted to bring something new to it,” art director Scott Sandler said. “What if we put the tats on the baby?” —A.M.

New York Dolls, ‘New York Dolls’

Rolling Stone’s review of the New York Dolls’ 1973 self-titled debut refers to the punk pioneers as “mutant children of the hydrogen age.” This comes across perfectly on the album cover, which shows the androgynous quartet slumped together on a couch, slathered in makeup and hairspray. It was created by Vogue photographer Toshi Matsuo after the Dolls nixed a plan by their label to shoot them near vintage dolls in an antique shop, sans makeup. “That couch we were sitting on, we found that on the street and brought it up,” said guitarist Sylvain Sylvain. “We put the white fabric on it — I remember tacking it on.” The look was so ahead of its time that imitators wouldn’t come along until hair metal arrived a decade later. —A.G.

The Smiths, ‘The Queen Is Dead’

Throughout the Smiths’ feverishly productive run in the mid-Eighties, lead singer Morrissey selected photo stills depicting midcentury movies and pop-culture moments for their singles and albums. His pick for the Smith’s third album, The Queen Is Dead, may be their most iconic: an image of French superstar Alain Delon in the film L’Insoumis, lying in distress. The concept of this beautifully handsome yet controversially macho star — the Brad Pitt of the Sixties — as a “queen” nods toward Morrissey’s subversive sense of humor. The layout, handled by Rough Trade’s Caryn Gough, casts the photo in shades of dark green, making Delon appear as a doomed royal in their death throes. —M.R.

Tyler, the Creator, ‘Igor’

The cover for Tyler, the Creator’s fifth solo album is striking in its minimalism: a pained close-up of the California-born polymath combined with a typewriter-font assertion that he was responsible for all the album’s sonics, and a salmon backdrop that feels aggressive despite its pastel hue. Igor further established Tyler as an artist willing to push himself into new realms, and the cover announces that to anyone flipping through a collection. “We work well together because I believe in what he wants to create,” photographer Luis “Pancho” Perez, who worked with Tyler to create the cover, told Complex in 2019. “Nothing has really changed his confidence in himself.” —M.J.

Radiohead, ‘Kid A’

At the close of the 20th century, Radiohead were an acclaimed British rock band desperate to be anything else. That jittery unease fueled the artwork that Thom Yorke created with his old friend Stanley Donwood, riffing on ancient mythology and paranoid dreams in late-night sessions. “There was an air of chaos suddenly, and that was really fun,” Yorke told Rolling Stone years later. The cover they chose for Kid A has all the unsettling intensity of the music Yorke was making with his bandmates: an icy, forbidding mountain range, like something out of a digital nightmare. “It was almost a dark fairyland,” Donwood said. “A very lonely, cold, and quiet place, apart from the punctuations of terrible war.” —S.V.L.

Blur, ‘Parklife’

Designers Rob O’Connor and Chris Thompson took to London’s streets for inspiration as they were brainstorming a cover for what would go on to be Blur’s era-defining 1994 album. While peering in the window of a betting lounge for sports-related ideas, they found a concept that had bite: “We centered in on the greyhounds,” Blur guitarist Graham Coxon told Brit-pop chronicler Dylan Jones in 2022’s Faster Than a Cannonball, “because they had an aggressiveness we liked. We chose the ones with the most teeth. They look deranged, just longing to kill, and there’s a bizarre look in their faces. You just don’t get that look with a footballer — well, maybe a little bit.” The image of racing dogs underscored the hunger of the best Brit-pop, and set Blur apart from their more glam-minded peers. —M.J.

Willie Nelson, ‘Red Headed Stranger’

On his legendary 1975 opus, Red Headed Stranger, Willie Nelson tells the tale of a preacher on the run after killing his own child and unfaithful wife. Nelson stepped into the role of an outlaw on the cover (designed by Monica White), which showed his unruly image framed in the style of a ‘Wanted’ poster. Red Headed Stranger was country music’s first concept album, a watershed for the outlaw-country movement that included Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson, and its cover went a long way toward creating the subgenre’s rough-hewn iconography.  —G.M.

Billie Eilish, ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’

Just like the music, the cover of Bille Eilish’s classic debut drops you right into her creepy-crawly teenage nightmares. Photographer Kenneth Cappello collaborated with Eilish on a 12-hour shoot, ending up with a deeply unsettling shot of Eilish sitting on bed, her eyes entirely white, pupils obscured. Eilish brought in sketches of her inspirations for the cover, which included the Babadook. (“I got so much inspiration from The Babadook,” she told Rolling Stone in 2019.) “She’s all in,” Cappello told MTV News. “Those wide eyes? Those aren’t in post, those are contacts. She goes all in on everything.”

FKA Twigs, ‘LP1’

The hauntingly plastic visage of British musician FKA Twigs dominates the cover of LP1, a bizarre representation of her disturbingly mutant electronic pop. It was constructed by Jesse Kanda, who met her via his longtime friend and collaborator Arca. “We did the front cover for her album in my room, with my shitty lights, and no people running around. I have the most control when I do everything myself,” he told Dazed in 2014. He sculpted a photograph of her using 3D technology, manipulating and warping the image, then painted over the results. Longtime XL Recordings art director Phil Lee and Twigs collaborated on the aquamarine blue design that spotlighted Kanda’s imagery. In 2015, the cover earned a Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package. —M.R.

Grace Jones, ‘Nightclubbing’

The famous Nightclubbing photo of Grace Jones dressed in an Armani suit, a cigarette dangling from her lips, was the culmination of a tempestuous personal and professional relationship between her and photographer Jean-Paul Goude. The image seemed as much a cheeky New Wave commentary on corporate Eighties style as an exercise in gender-bending fashion. But despite observers’ claims (and criticism) of how Goude crafted and manipulated her image, Jones has always asserted that she was in control of the process. “Jean-Paul would say, later…that he had created me,” she wrote in her 2015 autobiography, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs. “I knew that wasn’t the case, that I was creating myself before I met him.”–M.R.

R.E.M., ‘Murmur’

Lots of Southern bands had used pastoral imagery on their album covers to underscore their music’s down-home difference. R.E.M. flipped the script with the cover of their debut, Murmur. The front image shows a goth-y woods overrun by kudzu — a weed that grows so fast it covers and kills any plant in its way. The back image is of a disused train trestle near the band’s hometown of Athens, Georgia. Taken together, it was a perfect reflection of the band’s mysterious, enveloping sound. The “Murmur Trestle” immediately became part of local lore, defended by R.E.M. fans when it was approved for demolition in 2019. “Why do they need to preserve it?” said photographer Sandra-Lee Phipps, who took both photos. “It was just done randomly. Somehow it ended up mattering to people.” —J.D.

Van Halen, ‘1984’

When Warner Bros. designer Margo Nahas heard Van Halen’s original concept for the cover of their sixth LP — four dancing women made out of chrome — she quickly passed. (Already a seasoned illustrator of chrome, she “couldn’t imagine doing all the reflections,” she later said.) But when her husband, fellow designer Jay Vigon, brought her portfolio to the band, they were instantly drawn to her now-iconic painting of an angelic baby grinning and holding a smoke, which she’d modeled off a friend’s son. “I took a picture of him, took him candy cigarettes, which he proceeded to eat, every single one, after a brief tantrum, of course,” Nahas recalled in 2020. The impish yet innocent image encapsulated the lovable mischief of the band’s “Hot for Teacher” era. —H.S.

Lorde, ‘Melodrama’

For her highly-anticipated sophomore album, Lorde crafted a delicate cover that evoked Melodrama’s emotional heft. Painted by the Brooklyn artist Sam McKinnis — whom Lorde connected with via a fangirling email — and inspired by an image that McKinnis had made riffing on the cover of Prince’s Purple Rain, the cover is based on a photograph McKinnis took of Lorde as she lay in bed. Drenched in the shadows of a moody, electric blue that could swatch a dance floor or the walls of a club bathroom, with warm cracks of daybreak creeping on Lorde’s cheek, the image depicts her in the morning after a night of dancing with “all the heartache and treason” she sang about on the album. —M.G.

Marvin Gaye, ‘Here, My Dear’

There are breakup albums, and then there’s Here, My Dear, Marvin Gaye’s brutally honest unpacking of his in-progress divorce from his first wife, Anna Gordy. The serene front cover shows Gaye depicted as a Roman statue, standing in front of a lavish temple — its cornerstone bearing the inscription “Love and Marriage” — next to a sculpture of embracing lovers. But by the time you see the back-cover image, the sculpture and the temple have caught fire and are actively crumbling, and the inscription on the building now reads “Pain and Divorce.” If all that weren’t bleak enough, on the inner sleeve, we see a couple’s hands engaged in a Monopoly-like board game, with all their earthly possessions at stake between them, and the scales of justice looming ominously in the background. —H.S.

DJ Shadow, ‘Endtroducing’

DJ Shadow’s 1996 debut LP was constructed almost entirely out of samples, a love letter to funky, crackly old vinyl that was released into a world where most record stores only sold CDs. The cover image shows two of Shadow’s buddies from the Bay Area hip-hop label SoulSides, producer Chief Xcel and rapper Lyrics Born, going through the stacks at Records, a local institution (now closed) that billed itself as “a speciality shop dealing in out-of-print phonograph records.” As Shadow said of the store in the documentary Scratch, “Just being in here is a humbling experience because you’re looking through all these records, and it’s sort of like a big pile of broken dreams, in a way.” —J.D.

Sonny Rollins, ‘Way Out West’

“I was really living out my Lone Ranger thing,” Sonny Rollins said in 2009, reflecting on his Western-themed classic Way Out West. He wanted a cover that evoked the Westerns he grew up on, so photographer William Claxton suggested they pick up a ten-gallon hat, a holster, and a steer’s skull and head to the Mojave Desert, where he shot Rollins holding his saxophone and staring down the camera like a hardened cowboy. Some were critical of what they saw as the photo’s hokey premise and incorrectly assumed that Rollins was pressured into it. “Many people thought wrongly over the years that I was asked to pose that way or that the material was forced on me, because California was thought to be a movie place and a commercial place,” he said. “Not true. I was given complete control.” —H.S.

Janet Jackson, ‘The Velvet Rope’

With its themes of self-care, depression, and the then-taboo exploration of Black female queerness, The Velvet Rope may be Janet Jackson’s most intimate full-length work. Ironically, its cover depicts her clothed, not topless as on the Patrick Demarchelier-photographed shot on her previous album, 1993’s Janet. Photographer Ellen von Unwerth captured Jackson dressed in a black turtleneck with her head pointed downward. Meanwhile, the deep-red background tipped her audience to the burning emotions inside Jackson, as if she’s struggling to get it all out. (The interior photographs, shot by von Unwerth and Mario Testino, are more risqué.) “You know people they still ask me about it,” said von Unwerth of the enigmatic cover. “It became more iconic in a way.” —M.R.

My Bloody Valentine, ‘Loveless’

Swoosh-y abstraction was a go-to look for turn-of-the-Nineties shoegaze bands like Ride, Slowdive, and Swervedriver. But those bands usually worked in moody blues and grays. My Bloody Valentine’s choice of hot pink (a color you were more likely to see on a Poison record) for the cover of their 1990 masterpiece Loveless grabbed your eye with a look as undeniably loud as the band’s stomach-rattling guitar swells. MBV mastermind Kevin Shields and visual artist Angus Cameron collaborated on the image, taking a screengrab of Shields’ hands on his guitar from the band’s Cameron-directed “Too Shallow” video and turning it into a blur of radiant abstraction. —J.D.

Beastie Boys, ‘Licensed to Ill’

The cover of the Beastie Boys’ debut is as brash and playfully referential as the Beasties’ sound. Producer Rick Rubin got the idea for the cover — a Boeing 727 with a Beastie Boys logo and a tail number that, viewed in the mirror, says “eat me” — while reading through the Led Zeppelin bio Hammer of the Gods and spying a photo of the band’s private jet. “I wanted to embrace and somehow distinguish,” he said in the book 100 Best Album Covers, “in a sarcastic way, the larger than life rock & roll lifestyle.” Artists Stephen Byram and World B. Omes crafted the gatefold cover with a surprise in mind — at first it looks almost majestic, but when seen in full, the plane is revealed to have crashed, its front end crumpled. The resulting image provides another layer of irony: The plane, many have noted, looks like a joint smashed in an ashtray.

Joni Mitchell, ‘Hejira’

Joni Mitchell wrote Hejira while traveling cross-country, so she could have slapped a photo of an open road on the cover and called it a day. Instead, it was only the beginning. The sleek road sits inside a black-and-white Norman Seeff portrait of Mitchell, “haunted, like a Bergman figure,” wearing a beret and holding a cigarette. Around 14 photos were used for the cover and sleeves — including figure skater Toller Cranston out on the ice, to complete the wintry vibe — and an airbrush was used to make the images on the cover look like one cohesive illustration. The effort paid off, creating a beautifully intricate album cover to represent delicate tracks like “Amelia” and “Song for Sharon.” Looking back, Mitchell said it’s her favorite cover of hers: “A lot of work went into that.” —A.M.

Sonic Youth, ‘Goo’

Sonic Youth’s long run as the official band of America’s avant-garde art scene means that their catalog is full of iconic images, like Daydream Nation’s Gerhard Richter candle painting and Dirty’s Mike Kelley rag doll. But none are as enduring as the black-and-white sketch that SoCal punk legend Raymond Pettibon contributed to Goo. The pair of impossibly cool young sociopaths and their neo-noir tale of sex and death have been endlessly memed since then, but back in 1990, they made execs at the band’s new major-label home nervous — which was kind of the point. “That was so important at the time,” Lee Ranaldo later told biographer David Browne. “In a way, we were still in that world … that our ‘scene’ was making.” —S.V.L.

Rosalía, ‘El Mal Querer’

Rosalía tapped a longtime internet friend, the Spanish Croatian artist Filip Ćustić, to conceive what he’s described as a “visual universe” for her 2018 flamenco-pop masterwork, El Mal Querer. The two chatted over Whatsapp to devise an image for each track that would “update Spanish imagery to the 21st century.” In consistency with the record’s theme, Ćustić depicts Rosalía as an ethereal queen of the seraphs, a symbol of the divine feminine, liberated from the tyranny of a controlling man. “She emerges naked from the heavens, as if she were a goddess more than a virgin, saying, ‘This is me, and this has been my learning process,’” explained Ćustić in Spanish newspaper El Pais. —S.E.

Lana Del Rey, ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’

On the cover of her sixth album, Lana Del Rey seems to be pulling us into her world of deconstructed American myths, as she clings to the Kennedy-esque figure of Jack Nicholson’s grandson Duke Nicholson. From its oil-painted blue sky to Del Rey’s bright-green nylon jacket, the image’s retro-modern feel perfectly reflects the way the music inside offers her own 2010s vision of fading Laurel Canyon glory. The cover photo was taken by Del Rey’s sister, Caroline “Chuck” Grant, who has collaborated with the singer on a number of music videos and photo shoots (including a 2023 cover of Rolling Stone UK). “She captures what I consider to be the visual equivalent of what I do sonically,” Del Rey said in a 2014 interview. —G.M.

T. Rex, ‘Electric Warrior’

Few rock sleeves feel as purposefully barren as the Electric Warrior cover, which finds glam god Marc Bolan suspended, along with his guitar and amp, in what might as well be an interstellar void. Using a live-image shot by Kieron Murphy, Hipgnosis designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell added a striking gold halo that helped turn Bolan into a visual icon at precisely the point when he was completing his metamorphosis from flower-child folkie to consummate rock & roll dandy. “Black and gold, the metal guru in full force,” Beck once wrote of one of his favorite album-art specimens. “This is what we want a rock cover to look like.” —H.S.

A Tribe Called Quest, ‘The Low End Theory’

The cover of A Tribe Called Quest’s second album features an unnamed model photographed by Joe Grant. She’s kneeling in black shadows, her body covered in green and red paint. It’s partly inspired by Ohio Players’ memorable 1970s run of covers that depicted women in freaky and suggestive positions. “I wanted a white background for the shot, but they flipped it and made it black,” said group leader Q-Tip in the 2005 book Rakim Told Me. All of the Low End Theory’s visual elements, from the woman in body paint to the red-black-green color scheme reminiscent of the Pan-African flag, became defining elements for Tribe moving forward, and a signature for their deep-rooted and jazz-inflected bohemian sound. —M.R.

Björk, ‘Homogenic’

The making of Homogenic was a fraught time for Björk, as she adjusted to a new level of global fame and the suicide of Ricardo López, a disturbed fan who mailed a letter bomb to her London home. After spotting a striking fashion photo created by photographer Nick Knight and designer Alexander McQueen, she enlisted them to sum up the various emotional currents in her life in an arresting hyperreal portrait. The blend of cultural elements — a Japanese kimono, a European manicure, Maasai neck rings, and a Hopi “butterfly whorl” hairstyle — reflected Björk’s perception of herself as a global citizen. As she later said: “We were trying to make this person that was under a lot of restraint, like long manicure, neckpiece, headpiece, contact lenses — still trying to keep the strength.” —H.S.

Judas Priest, ‘British Steel’

Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton put in his time at the British Steel Corporation, working for the steel producer for five years before his band — who produce a different kind of heavy metal — decided to name their sixth album, British Steel. The title clicked with art director Rosław Szaybo and photographer Bob Elsdale, who created a giant razor blade out of aluminum with the band’s logo on it. Szaybo volunteered to hold it for the shot. “A lot of people looked at it and were really quite horrified,” Elsdale told Revolver. “The edges of the blade seemed to be cutting into Rosław’s flesh, because he was really gripping it quite hard. But that wasn’t the case — it actually had blunt edges. It wasn’t bloody, but it had an element of drama.” —K.G.

Sleater-Kinney, ‘The Hot Rock’

“It’s a labyrinthine record,” Carrie Brownstein wrote of Sleater-Kinney’s fourth LP, The Hot Rock, in her memoir, “sad, fractious, not a victory lap, but speaking to uncertainty.” Following up on their 1997 breakthrough, Dig Me Out, Brownstein, Corin Tucker, and Janet Weiss were working through interpersonal struggles while facing more scrutiny than ever before. The cover photo by Marina Chavez, showing the band standing on a Portland, Oregon, street corner, captures that heavy energy: Tucker and Weiss each stare toward the curb, the drummer looking almost trepidatious, while Brownstein holds up her hand, hailing a cab, her face bearing a disgruntled expression. Like the jewel thieves in the 1972 heist film that gave the album its name, the trio had no choice but to get a move on and meet their moment. —H.S.

David Bowie, ‘Diamond Dogs’

David Bowie closed out his glam era with the decadent apocalyptic excess of Diamond Dogs, a concept album set in a crumbling America of the future. “When we got to Diamond Dogs,” he later said, “that was when it was out of control.” The deranged spirit extended to its cover, designed by Belgian artist Guy Peellaert, which depicted Bowie as a grotesque half-man/half-dog, including genitals on his twisted body. Bowie’s pose on the cover was inspired by a 1926 photo of singer Josephine Baker. Just as the album was ready to get shipped to retailers, Bowie’s record label pulled the cover and had it airbrushed into something less offensive. Some copies did make it out, and Diamond Dogs remains the most provocative album cover of Bowie’s career. —G.M.

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The 15 Best Lil Yachty Songs

Let's talk about the best Lil Yachty songs - from his early days with "One Night" to his most recent unreleased leaks. The Atlanta rapper has come such a long way since his debut on SoundCloud and subsequent signing to Quality Control. In no particular order, here's our list of the 15 best Lil Yachty songs.

RELATED: Introducing Dc2Trill, the Texan Rap Phenom

15. "Plastic" - Lil Yachty (feat. Icewear Vezzo and Rio Da Yung OG) (2021)

What better way to start this list off than Lil Yachty's iconic Michigan Boy Boat album from 2021? This banger features the likes of Icewear Vezzo and Rio Da Yung OG, who matched Yachty's energy perfectly. Talk about a Michigan masterpiece: "Plastic" shows off the best elements of the hip-hop sub-genre.

14. "Who Want The Smoke?" - Lil Yachty (feat. Cardi B and Offset) (2018)

Who can forget the first time they heard "Who Want The Smoke?" with Lil Yachty, Offset, and Cardi B all together on a single song. The energy was absolutely electric, and it's no coincidence why all three of them have continued to thrive in their respective careers to this day.

13. "Split/Whole Time" - Lil Yachty (2020)

This is arguably one of the hardest Yachty songs ever, I will vouch for that on anything. From the intro to the very last moment of this song, there's something very special about this one. It's so characteristic of Yachty, so it's no surprise why it's become such a popular song.

12. "Minnesota" - Lil Yachty (feat. Quavo, Young Thug, and Skippa Da Flippa) (2016)

Off his debut album, "Minnesota" is an absolute classic Lil Boat banger. The song shows off all of the best sides of Yachty around the time of his breakout into the music scene. Ahh, the good ol' days of SoundCloud.

11. "Solid" - Lil Yachty (feat. SoFaygo) (2021)

The beat of this song makes you want to tilt your head back and ascend into the sky. From Yachty's cunning bars to SoFaygo's unmatched vocal approach, they bodied this beat perfectly, and showed exactly how fire a collab between the two of them is.

10. "T.D." - Lil Yachty (feat. Tierra Whack, A$AP Rocky, and Tyler, the Creator) (2020)

Let's not forget Yachty's song with this legendary cast of characters, which sampled the "Tokyo Drift" production, and became a modern classic. Every artist on this song has a reputation for being creative, and they didn't disappoint with this one.

9. "Demon Time" - Lil Yachty (feat. Draft Day) (2020)

Yachty has a knack for putting listeners on to the best underground artists, and that's exactly what he did here with Draft Day. If you're a seasoned Yachty listener, then this feature should've came at no surprise to you.

8. "Get Dripped" - Lil Yachty (feat. Playboi Carti) (2018)

Here's yet another one of the best Lil Yachty songs. Off of Yachty's Nuthin' to Prove album, "Get Dripped" gave fans a rare glance at just how special Yachty and Carti collabs are. The two artists morph their unique Atlanta-based styles together, and create music that literally nobody else in rap could replicate.

7. "66" - Lil Yachty (feat. Trippie Redd) (2018)

As far as timeless Lil Yachty classics go, this song is one of the top options. Trippie Redd and Lil Yachty both bring an unconventional style to the table, so of course the result of their collaboration is exactly that: unconventional.

6. G.I. Joe - Lil Yachty (feat. Louie Ray) (2021)

Another song from Yachty's Michigan Boy Boat album, "G.I. Joe" was yet another standout. It's great to see the chemistry Yachty has with all of the many features from this project, but there's something especially unique about the energy shared between Boat and Louie Ray.

5. "All of the Opps Is Opp'd" - Lil Yachty (Unreleased)

While not everyone is probably hip to this song, everybody should be. This Cash Cobain-produced banger samples Roy Ayers' "Everybody Loves the Sunshine," and turned it into a contemporary drill classic. Thank us later.

4. "Dynamic Duo" - Lil Yachty (feat. Tee Grizzley) (2021)

The name of the song is no lie: Lil Yachty and Tee Grizzley really are a "Dynamic Duo," but you should've known that already, after their prior collabs. To Lil Boat diehards, this was no surprise. On a stacked project, somehow this song managed to be one of the standouts.

3. "Poland" - Lil Yachty (2022)

Talk about "best Lil Yachty songs." It's impossible to forget the iconic moment Yachty had with the leak of this song. "I took the woOoOoOoOok... to Poland" will never get old, at least to the younger generation. The memes that were generated from this wave will surely never age, that's for sure.

2. "DipSet" - Lil Yachty and Offset (2016)

Lil Yachty and Offset have connected numerous times on collaborations, yet for some reason, this one never ceases to smack. If you haven't heard it already, here's your chance. Feast your ears upon yet another classic.

1. "Coffin" - Lil Yachty (2020)

One of the most memorable Lil Yachty releases ever was his 2020 single, "Coffin." From the moment the video teaser dropped, the hype was there. This felt like the start of a new era of Lil Yachty, embracing the most modern landscape of music, as he's always done in true Yachty fashion.

More music stories:

“Poland” by Lil Yachty: Why The Internet Is Obsessed with This New Song

Lil Yachty Net Worth: Lil Boat Brings in the Big Bucks

57 Perfect Rap Lyrics for Your Next Instagram Caption

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self-released

March 17, 2016

Atlanta’s Lil Yachty is a pure creation of the Internet. His cult hit "1 Night" found most of its audience through a viral sketch comedy video , and before that, he was being plugged on Twitter  by Ian Connor, a stylist and web curator known mostly for his connection to  A$AP Rocky . He’s indebted to Lil B , too, with free-form verses that mimic Based Freestyles and a carefree energy reminiscent of the Based God’s Myspace days. In short, Yachty thrives in Rocky’s post-regionalist rap universe, a space defined by digital platforms rather than geography. One of his producers goes by Digital Nas. He is definitive proof that modern rap has no gatekeepers, and Soundcloud rap’s laziest possible copy-and-paste job.

There isn’t a single thing Lil Yachty’s doing that someone else isn't doing better, and in richer details. On  Lil Boat , his debut mixtape, he makes a grating mess of these varying influences. The most obvious creative inspiration is iLoveMakonnen , which becomes especially clear on "Good Day," with its creaky falsetto and warbling melody. But Makonnen brings warmth and a feeling of ease to his tracks, while Yachty is constantly straining, as if just getting the words out of his mouth is a struggle. His rapping is jerky and his voice is so flat that Auto-Tune itself seems to buckle under the weight.

Yachty’s main selling point is "fun." This is all supposed to seem easy and unbothered, and it does on cheery tunes like “Wanna Be Us” and “Run/Running.” But everything feels unfinished or undercooked—a handful of songs are just a single verse and a hook, with no clear relationship between the two. So a song like "Not My Bro" opens with a bang and then shrinks back into nothing, a series of pitchy, singsongy whines. It's a lot of things —irritating, boring —but "fun" isn't one of them.

Yachty’s simplicity works in his favor when it comes to catchy hooks. On the better songs here, he sings/raps over bubbly, retro N64-sounding productions (mostly produced by Burberry Perry) that convey childlike wonder and amusement. But the hooks don’t do nearly enough to balance out Yachty’s painful shrieks, and many of his ideas aren’t just basic, they’re sloppily executed. Attempting to form a working model out of the flotsam of the moment is a fool’s errand. But what else is to be expected of a prisoner of shifting tides?

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Lil Yachty Delivers Colorful Visuals for Popular Song "1 Night"

Red braids and boats everywhere..

Lil Yachty aka Lil Boat has finally delivered an official video to go along with his popular single “1 Night.” Off of his first project, Lil Boat The Mixtape , the “1 Night” video is fun-filled and packed with spins on popular social media memes — a number of which will undoubtedly be familiar. Further adding to the comedic take are hilarious subtitles, VHS filters, and the infamous Jordan crying meme.

Check out the video above and let us know your thoughts below.

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Sorry Not Sorry

Lil Yachty & Veeze

3 SONGS • 7 MINUTES • AUG 16 2024

• TRACKS TRACKS
• DETAILS DETAILS

Rapper Lil Yachty brings feel-good positivity, druggy weirdness, and wild ATLian flair to a style he self-designated "bubblegum trap" in his early days, while becoming a figurehead of the movement sometimes known as "mumble rap." Within two years of scoring his first platinum single in 2016, he had a pair of Top Ten albums with 2017's Teenage Emotions and 2018's Lil Boat 2, and a Grammy nomination for DRAM's "Broccoli," on which he was featured. Between the release dates of those proper albums for the Quality Control label, Yachty's approach shifted from a reliance upon willfully off-key singing and lackadaisical rhyming to that of a comparatively traditional MC, albeit with his irreverent sense of humor still gamely displayed. His style continued to evolve with his successive recordings, including 2020's Lil Boat 3 and the psychedelic rock of 2023's Let's Start Here. He launched his group Concrete Boys with 2024's It's Us, Vol. 1 and teamed with electronic producer/songwriter James Blake the same year for the subdued and textural album Bad Cameo.

Born Miles McCollum in the metropolitan Atlanta city of Mableton, Yachty began to break in 2015, when Drake's OVO Sound Radio aired his bizarre and singsongy "Minnesota." He truly crossed over in 2016. During the year, he released Lil Boat and Summer Songs 2, his first two commercial mixtapes for the emergent Quality Control Music. The former featured "Minnesota" along with "One Night," a woozy party cut that reached number 30 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart, cracked the Hot 100, and went platinum. Also during the year, he was featured on DRAM's "Broccoli" and Kyle's "iSpy," both of which went Top Ten pop, and was part of Chance the Rapper's Top Ten release Coloring Book. "Broccoli" was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. Coloring Book took the award for Best Rap Album.

Yachty continually added to his secondary discography as a collaborator, most visibly beside Carly Rae Jepsen on a remake of Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock's "It Takes Two," but during 2017 and 2018, he directed most of his energy toward his first two proper albums. Teenage Emotions, issued in May 2017, peaked in the Top Ten of the Billboard 200 and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts, highlighted with the charting single "Peek a Boo," featuring Migos. Yachty returned the following March with Lil Boat 2, on which he sounded more like a traditional rapper with greater emphasis on enunciated verses and a reduction in off-key vocalizations. With tracks featuring PnB Rock, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, and Trippie Redd among its highlights, the album went Top Ten on multiple Billboard charts. That year, Yachty also released Nuthin' 2 Prove, which included "Who Want the Smoke?" with Cardi B and Offset. The set peaked just outside the Top Ten of the Billboard 200 and reached number nine on the R&B/hip-hop chart.

Lil Yachty issued a handful of stray tracks in 2019. Early the next year, he teamed up with Lil Keed and Zaytoven for the A-Team mixtape, and soon hit the Hot 100 as a lead artist for the third time with "Oprah's Bank Account," featuring Drake and DaBaby. That May, following the release of "Split/Whole Time," Yachty issued Lil Boat 3, which contained the two preceding singles and entered the Billboard 200 at number 14. A deluxe version of the LP, Lil Boat 3.5, appeared later that November. Extending his prolific run, he issued his third mixtape in May 2021. Inspired by the Michigan underground, Yachty recruited a team of Detroit and Flint rappers for Michigan Boy Boat, a U.S. Top 40 hit. Following 2022's "Humble," a collaboration with Diplo, he scored a minor hit with the solo track "Poland." His fifth studio LP, Let's Start Here, arrived in January 2023. In interviews preceding the release of the album, Yachty stated it would be more of a psychedelic record with live instrumentation than a traditional rap album. In keeping with the rock vibe, the album reached number one on Billboard's Top Modern Rock/Alternative Albums and number nine on the Billboard 200.

Yachty quickly returned to creating experimental trap songs, issuing non-album singles like "TESLA" and the J. Cole collaboration "The Secret Recipe" (from the EP of the same name) before 2023 was over. He ventured into dance music with the 2024 single "stayinit," a collaboration with Fred again.. and Overmono. He then debuted Concrete Boys, a group that included Camo!, Karrahbooo, Dc2trill, and Draft Day. Their album It's Us, Vol. 1 landed in the top half of the Billboard 200. Also in 2024, Yachty released Bad Cameo, a collaborative album with James Blake. The songs took a decidedly more gentle approach, leaning into Blake's ambient textures and Yachty's more melodic sing-rapping style. ~ Andy Kellman & David Jeffries

A shrouded yet essential figure in the Michigan rap scene, Veeze is somewhat of a musical enigma, building one of the genre's most die-hard fan bases despite rarely releasing material of his own. Though he solidified his inimitable, lethargic style on his debut mixtape, Navy Wavy (2019), and a sparse collection of 2020s anthems, he remained as prominent outside of music as he was within it -- he's been a constant presence in the social spheres and music videos of the region's most prolific artists. The release of his 2023 effort Ganger brought him major critical attention and Billboard chart placings.

Appearing on the scene in 2019, rapper Veeze was immediately identifiable by his understated vocals and breathy ad libs, debuting singles "Big Draco" and "Itself" before landing a local hit with the inimitable "Rusty." In what would become his most prolific run, the rapper quickly capitalized with a string of 14 singles and collaborations, including several tracks with close associate and fellow Michigan mainstay Babyface Ray ("Half & Half," "Red Key," "Exotics"). His slick, effortless take on the region's sound could be heard on his first mixtape, Navy Wavy (2019), an 11-track set with appearances from local figureheads Beno, Babyface Ray, and Peezy.

In the early 2020s, Veeze appeared in music videos and social media while dropping sporadic features and singles of his own. He started 2020 with some one-off experimentation -- the drowsy "Them One Guys," the Kanye West flip "Flamie Foxx," and the Big Pun-sampling "Fat Albert" -- before his regional sound continued to develop on solo singles "Veeze Glo," "Yoa Twin," and "Friend of Mine." This loose schedule continued into 2021 and 2022 with the rapper drip-feeding singles like "A&W," "Kurt Angle," "Choppas in Hawaii," and "Let It Fly." With a slower release schedule came a more devoted fan base -- several online channels dedicated to the rapper soon attracted a following of their own, piecing together unreleased songs previewed on social media.

In 2023, he released one of his biggest singles, "GOMD," as well as a remix featuring Lil Uzi Vert. Both versions appeared on the second Veeze full-length, Ganger, which also included appearances by Lucki and Lil Yachty. The release charted in the Billboard 200. ~ David Crone

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Did Big Sean diss Lil Yachty on his new album Better Me Than You? Rapper addresses rumors in latest interview

B ig Sean recently clarified the speculations of him dissing Lil Yachty in his new album Better Me Than You, released on August 30, 2024. When the Detroit rapper dropped his sixth studio album last Friday, many wondered if he was taking subtle shots at Yachty on his bonus track Wire Me in the album's limited edition, titled Pressure Edition .

"I mean, I might have to even throw 'em a lil' boat/ I'm seein' n****s gettin' drowned out 'cause they can't switch up the flow/Just give 'em a year or two, and they gettin' exposed," he rapped in Wire Me.

Yachty's other monikers included Lil Boat, which prompted speculations of a diss. However, Big Sean refuted these claims in an interview with Complex published on the day of his album's release. When asked if the line was an intentional jab at Yachty, Sean said:

"I wasn't talking about [Lil Yachty]. Yachty is on the album as well. On "Yes," he's doing adlibs with me. I'm glad you said that, no I'm not taking a jab at Yachty. It was like a whole double entendre. [If I was referencing him] that would have been a whole other entendre."

Big Sean added that Yachty had been in the studio with him when they recorded the album. He also said the latter had a verse on the track Yes , alluding to its potential release in the future.

During the interview, Big Sean was also asked if he was referring to any specific rapper with the line about artists drowning because they can't switch up the flow. Big Sean said he included the line in the song because he felt it was clever, but acknowledged that artists sometimes use the same flow, which bores the audience.

Big Sean also responded to accusations of stealing Baby Keem's flow in Yes

Big Sean was also accused of stealing 23-year-old rapper Baby Keem 's flow when he released the music video for his song Yes on August 20. While Sean defended himself on social media at the time, he elaborated on his thoughts about the situation in his Complex interview.

When asked what he thought about comments accusing him of stealing Keem's flow , he said he tried his best not to think much of it. He added that this was not the first time he faced such claims, recalling an anecdote of him coming across a group of teenagers playing his song All Me .

"They were playing "All Me" where I'm like "H** shut the f*ck up." And I remember one of the kids was like, "Oh, did you get that from Baby Keem?" But the kid had to be like, I don't know, 14. My point is that I just don't read too much into it, man. But there are always things that you can go into my discography and see that I'm literally just picking apart what I've already done," Sean said.

He continued he would always credit any artist who inspired him, saying people always deserved recognition because creating music was difficult.

Better Me Thank You is Big Sean's first album in four years, following Detroit 2 in 2020. The 21-track album includes features from Gunna, Kodak Black, and Cash Cobain among others. The album has four limited edition variants, each with a different bonus track.

Pharrell, Kyle Richh, Lil Wayne, And Lil Yachty Take Over The Airwaves In Their Colorful ‘Can’t Hold Me Down’ Video

Remember the movie Pleasantville , the 1998 fantasy dramedy with Reese Witherspoon and Tobey Maguire, where the two modern teens get transported into their favorite 1950s black-and-white sitcom, bringing color and chaos into the lives of the characters in the titular small town?

That’s basically the plot of Pharrell ‘s latest Doodles video, “Can’t Hold Me Down” with Kyle Ricch, Lil Wayne , and Lil Yachty , only sort of in reverse. Most of the video takes place in the greyscale Dullsville, but the three rappers invade the airwaves via the denizens’ TV sets, blasting them with color and brainwashing them into dancing to Pharrell’s boisterous beat.

“Can’t Hold Me Down” is the second single from Pharrell’s ongoing project with Doodles, the next-gen entertainment company that spun off from the NFT craze a couple of years ago and now looks to, apparently, get into the animation and film businesses with the Dullsville And The Doodleverse movie. The movie will debut at The Toronto International Film Festival featuring the vocal talents of Lil Wayne, Lil Yachty, Coi Leray, and Swae Lee, with a soundtrack produced by Pharrell. The movie was announced in July, with the Coi Leray-led single “ Not In The Store ” following in August.

You can watch the video for “Can’t Hold Me Down” above.

TESLA - EP Lil Yachty August 25, 2023

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