The Low End Theory

The Low End Theory has one of the strangest and most beautiful covers in hip-hop: the outline of a kneeling woman, drawn only in glowing red and green lines against pure black. The idea came from Q-Tip, who loved the covers of the Ohio Players and their glamorous models. "He knew he wanted this painted lady," as one account of the cover put it.

The effect was created for real. Jean Kelly, Jive's vice president of artist development, and Ann Carli developed the concept and hired the Brooklyn photographer Joe Grant. A nude model was painted with neon paint and photographed under black light, so that only the painted lines show up in the darkness. The red, black and green palette is the colour scheme of the Pan-African flag, which made the image feel Afrocentric as well as sensual, and the title rests along the figure's lower body, a visual joke on the album's obsession with bass.

It was the group's third idea. A bedroom scene with a woman listening to the record at midnight was rejected by the label, and a shoot of fans in headphones at the Flatiron Building in the snow went nowhere. Designer Nick Gamma of Jive's Zombart art department then hand-lettered the type. The album came out on 24 September 1991, and Complex later ranked its cover the greatest hip-hop album cover of all time.