Return of the Boom Bap

After seven years leading Boogie Down Productions, KRS-One made his first solo album, and its title gave a name to a whole style of hard New York drums. The cover shows the Teacha in a basement studio, wearing headphones, washed in warm orange and cold blue light.

It was the first album cover shot by the photographer Daniel Hastings, who went on to shoot many of the defining covers of 1990s New York rap. Hastings explained to Muse by Clio that the concept used the headphones as an inverted microphone. He shot on Fuji 64T reversal film with a daylight strobe and cross-processed it to get the strange colours, and a Heineken bottle sits in the background.

Return of the Boom Bap was released on 28 September 1993 with production from DJ Premier, Kid Capri and Showbiz. The phrase in its title became the standard name for the sound it celebrated.