Description

The first plan for the cover of Illmatic was a shock image: Nas holding Jesus Christ in a headlock, a nod to the religious provocations of his verse on "Live at the Barbeque". What Columbia released instead was quieter and far more powerful. Designer Aimee Macauley took a childhood photograph of Nas, taken around the time his father, the musician Olu Dara, came home from a tour, and laid it over a photograph of a city block, with photography credited to Danny Clinch.

Nas was about seven in the picture, an age he later described as "the year I started to acknowledge everything around me." His afro, he said, was inspired by Michael Jackson. The ghostly child superimposed on the streets turns the album into a memory of growing up in the Queensbridge housing projects, the same streets the lyrics map in detail. The idea may have had a model: Ego Trip reported that the design was reputedly inspired by the 1974 jazz album A Child Is Born, whose cover also places a child over an urban scene.

Illmatic was the first hip-hop album to put a child on its cover, and the idea spread fast. Within months The Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die appeared with a baby on the front, and the comparison was made openly on record. NME later wrote that the image shows "how easily innocence is lost in NY's neglected concrete jungles." The album was released on 19 April 1994.

Credit

Design by Aimee Macauley; photography by Danny Clinch