The most interesting thing about it, to me, isn’t the artwork itself, but the fact that it’s designed by KAWS–the renowned graff artist and designer. This is a guy whose art sells out just as fast as it goes up on his website. And whose toys and clothing are hugely popular amongst the HypeBeast-reading, Complex-subscribing “hypester” crowd–which just so happens to make up a hefty portion of Kanye’s base. So of course I’m curious to see if his involvement here will have a profound impact on sales. Are folks going to buy the album twice? Once when it’s first released, and again when the KAWS packaging goes on sale December 16th? It should be interesting to see.

Nonetheless, Kanye deserves tremendous props for never neglecting or ignoring the importance of the visuals that are attached to his albums.

[H/T: Allan Cole]

Check out the results I got when I ran a search based on Gureala’s color palette:

Interesting stuff.

[H/T: Flwrpt]

Whatever the case, I’m amped! Best believe I’ll be in someone’s theater when this drops, front and center, eating popcorn with chopsticks no less. Aight, maybe I’ll pass on the chopsticks. But I’ll most definitely be there to see whether or not they’ve revived this 80’s classic properly.

Here’s a memorable scene from the original:

After I spotted preview images of TI’s Paper Trail album cover a couple months ago on the web, I immediately put it down in my book as one of the best hip-hop album covers of the year. In fact, with a little over 2 months left in ‘08, and still without any contenders in sight, it might be the best cover of the year (oh, you think otherwise? drop your picks in the comments.).

However, when I first blogged about the cover here, the one thing that drove me crazy is that I couldn’t find a single drop of info on the artist behind it. Nothing. Nada. Not even a small clue on the websites of Atlantic Records and Grand Hustle Entertainment. But now, thanks to tips from a few awesome Gureala readers, I now have a name and website to put with the work: Ian Wright.

What’s even cooler, is that while looking through Ian’s portfolio (which includes more dope mosaic style projects) another question was answered: the cover isn’t a vector image as I initially suspected. Nope. The shreds of money, notebook paper, envelopes, newspaper and receipts that make up TI’s portrait are 100% real:

Amazing!

(images via Ian Wright)

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!

I was aimlessly roaming about the web earlier today when, whadda you know, I stumbled across the freshly redesigned website of one of my favorite hip hop record labels in the game, Stones Throw Records. They’ve implemented a new three column layout as well as an online store, and I must say, things looks super clean!

If there’s one thing that I have to give Stones Throw major props on, aside from the music of course, it’s their kick ass branding and design efforts. From album cover art to fashion to promo merchandise, they just get things right (take a look at this latest project). There aren’t too many record labels left out there that still put a great deal of focus on those areas, you know.

All in all, the Stones Throw site is one of the more well designed, not to mention personal/connected/accessible hip hop record label sites around. And this new redesign just took it to another level. The only thing missing from their site at this point (they already have messageboard, behind the scenes/user submitted picture gallery, and podcast)? Artists’ blogs, or at the very least a general label blog. Hop to it, guys!

Looks like the hardest working man in hip-hop show business is about to make a splash in the sneaker world. This morning on his blog, The Roots’ ?uestlove proudly unveiled his upcoming Nike signature shoe, the Air ?uesto 1. After a year in the making, the kicks will be available in select stores on August 1st in two very, uh, how do you say, interesting colorways–one of which will be a limited release:

25 lucky people across the US will open their boxes to receive a “golden ticket”—and unlike mr wonka i aint talkin a piece of paper.

the shoes will be golden (the one on top)—them shits are the ones to kill for.

i cant make the “official” announcement on what you will get if you are the lucky ones but lemme just say im gonna stand in line for my own damn shoe.

Best of all, ?uest will be dj’ing in several stores to promote the shoe’s release:

aug1- i’ll be at ALIFE in NYC
aug5- i’ll be at UBIQ in philly
aug 7th I’ll be at Undefeated in LA

Now, my question to you guys: Would you pick these up, or pass ‘em by?

(via ?uesto’s Blog)

Then said ghost blogger is doing a pretty half assed job over on Kanye Universecity. That’s my short response to this whole situation.

If Kanye really is doing all the blogging himself, then he should definitely be commended on his efforts. The guy is an international celebrity, with a demanding schedule, and somehow he still finds the time to deliver several blog updates a day–you gotta respect that. However, if it’s all the work of a ghost blogger within his camp (which he denies), then it’s all pretty pathetic. Not because it’s false advertisement, but because I’d expect higher posting quality from such a person. I mean, assuming that a ghost blogger’s schedule wouldn’t be nearly as demanding as Kanye’s, I’d like to think that he/she would have a little more time on his/her hands to compose a bit more than just the one sentence, picture heavy, “oh look cool” type posts that we often see on Kanye’s blog (again, if it’s Kanye himself, he gets a pass, considering his hectic, stadium status schedule and all).

One last thing, and this is something that I’d like to explore further in a future post, I can’t understand why celebrity hip-hop blogs & fan sites feel the need to follow in the footsteps of existing hip-hop news and gossip blogs. Instead of sticking to the exclusive, behind the scenes content that you’d expect from an artist’s blog, many dish out the same news and gossip that can be found on hundreds of other hip-hop sites around the web. So disappointing, so disconnected.

MagCloud:

MagCloud enables you to publish your own magazines. All you have to do is upload a PDF and we’ll take care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management, and more.

It costs you nothing to publish a magazine on MagCloud. To buy a magazine costs 20¢ per page, plus shipping. For example, a 20-page magazine would be four bucks plus shipping. And you can make money! You set your issue price and all proceeds above the base price go to you. Shipping is a flat $1.40/copy (USPS first class mail) for quantities 1-9, or a flat $13 for quantities from 10-100 (per box of 10-100).

I really wish this service was around way back when the idea of Gureala first entered my mind. Back when I wanted to bring the vision to life in the form of a monthly or bi-montly arts & culture mag, but settled on Moveable Type after peeping the costs of printing and distribution. I really have to tip my hat to HP on this one (yep-yep, MagCloud is an HP Labs creation). Lots of possibilities here. I’m really excited to see how bloggers will take to this service, as well as the types of publications that we’ll begin to in the MagCloud library (there’s already a nice little collection forming) over the next several months. Call me corny, but I’d really like to see some blog year in review-type pubs come out of this…crazy possibilities. What say you?

Update: Thanks for the publisher invite!