Criminal Minded

The front of Criminal Minded shows the two members of Boogie Down Productions, KRS-One and DJ Scott La Rock, sitting at a table holding guns, with ammunition on display. The title runs across the top and the group's name across the bottom. On the back cover the scene continues: the same two men at a table, one on the phone and the other pointing a gun, with the track list and credits arranged around them. The record came out on B-Boy Records, a small independent label in the Bronx.

XXL later wrote that this "was the first time rappers were holding firearms on the cover of a major hip-hop release." The group insisted the weapons stood for self-defence and militancy. KRS-One explained the image in political terms: "If you look at the cover of Criminal Minded, that's what we were saying modern-day Black Panthers are." The pose borrows from the armed portraits of the Black Panther Party, transplanted to a table in the South Bronx.

The photograph became a blueprint. Within a few years guns were common on rap covers, often without the political framing BDP had claimed. Its meaning also changed quickly and painfully: Scott La Rock was shot and killed on 27 August 1987, months after the album appeared, and the image of him armed took on a grim second reading. The album was released on 3 March 1987.