The Infamous

The cover of Mobb Deep's second album is a tight, close portrait of Havoc and Prodigy, the Queensbridge duo, staring out from a plain black background. Nothing else is on it, only two young faces and the group's name, and it set the cold, paranoid mood of the record before a note was played.

The photograph was taken by the late Chi Modu, one of the defining photographers of 1990s rap. He spent a day with Havoc and Prodigy in Queensbridge, shooting them in everyday moments, and ran a second session in the studio that produced the cover. Modu pushed the film to deepen the colours and split the focus, keeping Prodigy soft and Havoc sharp.

The Infamous was released on 25 April 1995 and became one of the cornerstones of East Coast hardcore rap. Havoc later told BET that "a huge part of our success was that cover."