Description

The debut album of one of hip-hop's most imposing figures has a baby on the front. Against a plain white background, an infant with a small afro sits in close-up, looking straight out of the frame, with the title spelled in lowercase beneath. The joke and the threat sit side by side: the record is called Ready to Die, and the cover shows the very beginning of a life.

That was the point of the concept, which follows the artist from birth to death. The album opens with the sound of a birth and ends with "Suicidal Thoughts", and the baby on the sleeve is the first chapter of that story. Butch Belair took the photograph, and The Drawing Board handled art direction and design for Bad Boy. The baby resembled the rapper, and fans long assumed it was a picture of Christopher Wallace himself. In 2011 the New York Daily News suggested the child was a Bronx teenager named Keithroy Yearwood, though Bad Boy could not confirm it.

The cover arrived on 13 September 1994, five months after Nas had put his own childhood photo on Illmatic, and other rappers noticed. A Raekwon track featuring Ghostface Killah the next year mocked the baby cover as a copy. The comparison did not hurt either record. The image has since been listed among the best covers in hip-hop.

Credit

Photography by Butch Belair; art direction and design by The Drawing Board