Long. Live. A$AP

The cover of Long. Live. A$AP shows the Harlem rapper wrapped in an American flag, printed in black and white and broken up as if seen through a glitching VHS tape. The figure appears split in two. The photograph was taken by Phil Knott, and the sleeve was art directed and designed by Joe Perez, a member of Kanye West's DONDA creative team. Virgil Abloh, then Rocky's creative director, oversaw the visual world of the release, which also took in stage sets and the "Fashion Killa" video.

The image followed the monochrome look of Rocky's 2011 mixtape Live. Love. A$AP, which showed him in a buttoned-up plaid shirt exhaling smoke. On the debut the casual pose gave way to something more monumental. Crack Magazine read the shift in the title too: Long. Live. framed Rocky and the A$AP crew as permanent fixtures. Draining the flag of its red and blue turned a patriotic symbol into a fashion object, in keeping with a rapper who sold himself as much through style as sound.

Writers placed the cover in a long line of rap records that borrow the flag. The Awl called it "a good cover" and found it "most reminiscent of" OutKast's Stankonia. The black-and-white scheme stuck: when Rocky revealed the art for At.Long.Last.A$AP in 2015, Billboard noted that it continued the same theme. Knott later sold a print of Rocky at Sotheby's hip-hop auction in 2020. The album was released on 15 January 2013.