I never imagined I still would be talking about hip hop variants so many months after they began, but I am. They are still fantastic but there really are too many. As a self proclaimed hip hop archivist there are many obscure ones that even I have to look up. It would have been better to restrict it to twenty odd books of the classic hip hop albums, which brings me to the one above. Mobb Deep’s Infamous album was a dark and smooth album and was representative of the more modest pieces of braggadocio hip hop. The music was sonically flowing body of work and an album that is regarded as one of the best of all time. Theotis Jones has faithfully created an homage cover in an incredible amount of detail. The layout and positions are exactly in keeping with the original. Havoc’s features are a great fit for Cage and their facial expressions are very similar, with a little more aggression with Luke. The colouring and rendering of his skin tones is really quite impressive in its realism and is part of the reason why this variant is one of the more faithful replications. Iron Fist is seemingly ideal to play Prodigy with the arrogant pout and headgear. Once again the facial expression is faithfully reproduced. The final touches of the gang shots bottom right are similar in appearance and the members in the backdrop all copy quite naturally. The final touch is the name of the book/album with the colour, shape and font giving the Power Man Iron Fist treatment to a Mobb Deep Classic. Incredible cover by the talented Theotis Jones.
House Of Flying Scalpels 