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16 Times Comic Book Artists Absolutely Rocked Hip-Hop Album Cover Art
Geeks rule everything around you.
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From that body-rocking moment in time back in 1979, when Sugar Hill Gang rapper Big Bank Hank waxed poetic about the Mack game that he’d once spit to Superman’s girlfriend (reporter Lois Lane), the love affair the hip-hop generation has with comic books was pretty much set in stone.
Or, more accurately, etched into the grooves of black, 12” vinyl.
In the four-plus decades since record needles were first dropped onto Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”, the technologies that we use to listen to music now have changed significantly. But the intersecting links that were forged between comic nerd culture and hip-hop music culture haven’t.
If anything, they’ve gotten deeper.
Today, publishers like Marvel Comics make generous use of genius promo gimmicks (see: the hip-hop homage variant covers series) to show the love that rap music fans have for comics isn’t an unrequited one. The comics industry sends its very own specially-priced retail-love right back.
But the road from there to here was a long and winding courtship that was partly paved four decades ago with vintage verses about Lois Lane and her superhero boyfriend.
As destiny would have it, within a couple of years fans of the comics medium working at record labels like Tommy Boy and Def Jam would even begin seeking out comic book artists to share their mastery of a valued aesthetic with a new wave of young music makers and their listeners.
Exhaustively curated here for your viewing pleasure is a senses-shattering list revealing 16 times comic book artists rocked hip-hop music cover art.
Collectors, assemble.
