Ghetto D

Pen & Pixel, the Houston design firm started in 1992 by brothers Aaron and Shawn Brauch, made the look of late-1990s Southern rap. Its covers piled Photoshop effects, chrome lettering, flames and luxury goods onto one image, and the studio turned out close to 20,000 of them before it closed in 2003. Ghetto D is one of the defining examples.

Master P's name sits across the middle in huge sparkling letters made to look encrusted with diamonds, above a cracked, camouflage-patterned GHETTO D logo in a sea of fire. The top of the frame is packed with fragments of earlier No Limit covers. As Master P told The Fader, "I just kinda put everything into one thing, and then I blinged up my name on that," adding that he put "all the covers from all the other album covers in that."

The approach fit an independent label that sold its records through sheer volume and a constant flow of releases. Ghetto D came out on 2 September 1997 through No Limit and Priority, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, and made the bling-and-explosions Pen & Pixel style the face of Southern hip-hop's commercial breakthrough.