Stankonia

On the cover of Stankonia, André 3000 and Big Boi stand in front of an enormous American flag drained to black and white and hung upside down. The flag is a real object: it hangs in the tracking room of the duo's studio in northwest Atlanta, and OutKast still owns it.

The colourless, inverted flag suggests a separate America, the imaginary place called Stankonia where the album's music comes from. NME described both the sound and the sleeve as "quietly subversive," pointing to songs that criticise America's appetite for war and oil, and Paste ranked the image among the best album covers of the 2000s.

The photograph was taken by Michael Lavine, with art direction and design by Mike Rush. Stankonia was released by LaFace and Arista on 31 October 2000.