Midnight Marauders

At the centre of the Midnight Marauders cover is a woman painted in red, black and green, wearing headphones, the same Afrocentric figure that appeared on The Low End Theory two years earlier. Around her, row after row of faces fill the frame, most of them wearing headphones too.

Those faces are a roll call of hip-hop in 1993. According to Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists, 71 artists and radio DJs appear across the album's covers, among them the Beastie Boys and Dr. Dre, and the group used the artwork to salute the peers it respected. Critics have read the painted woman as a nod to rap's African roots and to the colourful mix of sounds on the record.

Art director Nick Gamma later described an earlier idea that Q-Tip came up with and then dropped: a woman in bed in a loft window, wearing headphones, with the Manhattan skyline and a full moon behind her. The final design, credited to Gamma with Jive Records' Jean Kelly as the concept's driving force, was released on 9 November 1993.