E. 1999 Eternal

Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, five rappers from Cleveland, Ohio, invented a rapid, harmonised flow that sounded like nothing else in rap. The cover of their second album shows the group standing together on a city street at dusk, washed in deep red and brown light under their name. The title points to East 99th Street, the corner in Cleveland where they came up.

The album credits the cover to Quentin Frost, with design and art direction by Don Cunningham. The dark, warm tones match the album's mood of mourning and the supernatural, from its prayers to its songs about death.

The group had been signed by Eazy-E to his label Ruthless Records, and he died in March 1995, four months before the album came out on 25 July 1995. Its single "Tha Crossroads," a tribute to him and to friends they had lost, went to number one and won a Grammy, and the melodic style of E. 1999 Eternal still echoes through rap today.