It's Dark and Hell Is Hot

DMX's debut cover is a portrait of the rapper tattooed and shirtless, with a grim expression and his face held high. The packaging was designed by Bill McMullen, the designer and illustrator behind sleeves for Beastie Boys and Foxy Brown, and the photographer Jonathan Mannion lists it among his album covers. Mannion had shot JAY-Z's Reasonable Doubt two years earlier and was becoming the go-to photographer for the new generation of New York rap.

The image is all persona. One reviewer at the time wrote that DMX's character "pervades via the album title and the cover art," and that the bare-chested, defiant pose was "all part of his well-crafted persona." Where much late-1990s rap packaging traded on champagne and designer clothes, this sleeve strips everything away: skin, ink and a stare. The title does the rest, a line of scripture-flavoured menace that matches an album full of prayers, dog barks and violence.

The cover opened one of the most intense image campaigns in rap. Before the year was out Mannion photographed DMX drenched in blood for Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, released in December 1998, and both records entered the Billboard 200 at number one. It's Dark and Hell Is Hot was released on 19 May 1998.