As I’ve mentioned here numerous times before, I’m a sucker for great album cover art. So of course I had to post this:

It’s the cover of T.I.’s upcoming album, Paper Trail, and in my humble opionion, it just might be one of the best album covers that I’ve seen from a hip hop artist all year. The execution is dope, and the concept behind it is pretty clever, I think:

The illustration for Paper Trail pays an obvious homage to my rekindled affinity for writing my lyrics down as well as displays my commitment to keep my art slanted towards the abstract. [MTV]

On first glance, I actually thought the cover may have been partly inspired by the legal troubles that T.I. experienced earlier in the year: scatterd paper, maybe legal docs…the Feds trying to piece together a case against him…him later beating the case and rising from it all to restart his career. Ha! Looks like I was way off. Either way, it’s great to see him take a step away from normal hip hop album cover trends (you know the formula: studio photography, thugged out imagery, simple logo placement), and go with something a little more conceptual and abstract. Props!

In the meantime, I’ve been searching for info on the designer who’s responsible for this. No clues on the Grand Hustle (T.I.’s label) website, or anywhere else on the web for that matter (at least not yet). If you happen to know who she/he is, please drop a line in the comments or shoot me an email!