I recently finished up another classic album cover for group leader of The N.O.C. K Sos. The thing that I love best about working with Sos is that we have an unspoken kinship in the realm of visual imagery. When he commissions me for a cover he conveys his concepts in the best form he knows how, extremely detailed with full penmanship. K Sos not only raps hard off the ill beats on his records he puts a lot of thought into how he wants to visually reflect the library of work that he puts into each and every title. We do a lot of corresponding remotely to get each and every cover project just right. He usually throws me a page or two of specifics relating to the ‘theme’ of the album and then begins to illustrate his story to me with snippets of inked notes as well as floating me some raw tracks to get inspired.
His latest release, The Late-Nite Walrus, is no exception for our insanely syncopated symbiosis. What began as a few liner notes from K Sos turned into a deeply exciting cover to work on when it came around to the BeeryMethod Studio. His notes consisted of “a walrus (with sunglasses, a tuxedo on, tusks, and whiskers) walking forward in a desert. In the desert, he is surrounded by stacks of CDs (which appear like castles) and tons of random book shelves filled with books.” I decided to take this concept a bit further and ‘class’ it up a bit. Rather than stacks of compact discs I decided that the old vinyl was more proper. The walrus character was a depiction of a burnt-out Vegas act who had done his dues and is now out of his element yet surrounded by what he loves best, his words and music. This was a clever hint on the personality and desires of K Sos as well. We even hid a few book titles on the foreground shelf that are a few of Sos’s favorites.
Aside from the vinyl I thought the perfect compliment to this lounge-act-walrus was to add in a few other antiqued elements such as the old record player, radios, violin, and vinyl records stuck in the ground with K Sos’s other cd titles. Taking a reference from the Marvin Gaye album I Want You, I divided the top half of the cover with a simple white line and black rectangle. This also conveys the old record covers of the era and seemed like the perfect touch for the theme of this album. Along with the Vegas references I created lettering based upon the famous ‘Welcome to Las Vegas’ sign on the strip and even borrowed those neon star elements which really made the cover ‘pop’. Using our neon color trifecta which consisted of purple, green, and blue it was an easy task of strategically placing these colors and elements to keep the viewers I moving around the cover.
Last but not least I chose to utilize the crow element. The crows represent the vehicle of bringing knowledge, shape-shifting, eloquence, prophecy, boldness, skill, knowledge, cunning, and trickery as symbolism. The flock of crows is the unleashing of lyrical mayhem and fortitude K Sos brings to the mic and were worthy elements to bring intricacy to the sky and atmosphere. They float nicely in front of the moon.
When I finished the cover, after a few small revisions, K Sos sent me this message: “Do you have a portal into my brain?…is that a component of the BeeryMethod?…shit is fucking ridic!”
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