There are different moods that accompany the music, with the Ballerina painting alluding to his song “Devil in a New Dress” and the image of Kanye’s severed head with a sword through it alluding to “Power.” The covers of MBDTF help boost the work to its stardom, and reflect how striking the music is.

The different album covers that accompany MBDTF, cohesive in that each is a semi-surreal painting set on a striking red backdrop, perfectly portray the meaning behind Kanye’s masterpiece of an album. Lastly, the soft orange backdrop with the faded photos gives the cover a more vintage feel, portraying the singer’s juxtaposed maturity with his constant self-questioning, making it the best cover of all eight major albums. Based on the context of these songs, the text on the album cover is particularly striking, as it seems to match the internal strife expressed by Kanye in each of the songs on the album. This is one of Kanye’s most vulnerable albums, with many songs conveying a sense of doubt and revealing his fear about whether he is a good husband and father.

Through the songs on this album, Kanye creates a narrative that reveals how uncertain he is of his life. In addition to these images, the text “WHICH / ONE” is repeated many times. The cover artwork for The Life of Pablo features two photos, one of a family and the other of woman with a figure similar to Kim Kardashian. In this analysis, we rank every Kanye album based on cover art and how much the art adds to the album itself. Many of the albums have alternate covers, showing the complexity of the songs and their subsequent styles. One of the most important aspects of Kanye’s art is the cover of his albums, each one speaking to his personal transformation as a rapper while staying true to the overall message of the music. When The Life of Pablo was released, I came across this tweet linking Kanye’s previous three albums to the three phases of Pablo Picasso’s artwork, which might’ve been a stretch, but definitely resonated with the singer’s ability to blend the visual with the musical.

808s and heartbreak cover