Famed photographer Danny Hastings has shot iconic cover images for Big Pun’s Capital Punishment and Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, but his album art shoot for Nas’ I Am almost ended in disaster. In order to make the iconic mask featured on the cover, Hastings and his crew put a clay mold on his face and poked air holes so he could breathe, but he almost suffocated after clay got lodged in his nose.
“The funny part was that the first attempt, Nas was getting asphyxiated. We almost killed Nas,” Hastings told MTV.com. “We cleaned him up, and he was like, ‘Let’s do it again!’ […] Nas was a true sport.”
He also explained the meaning behind the cover, and how it built off of previous album art for Illmatic and It Was Written. “The first one, you have him being a boy, very young. The second was a little bit older. And the third one, he was a king,” he continued. “He already conquered the world. He was on top of the world. He was doing a lot of big things. We came with the concept of making a King Tut sarcophagus piece.”
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Imagine that…
ahhh the age before photoshop
Co-sign
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXKOM6LaHZw
We Killin It – Barton Block
Wow. That would have sucked (nh).
this guy starts every article the exact same, he always calls the artist by one of their nick names its likes hes using a fucking template and filling in the blanks, what shitty writer!! i bet he looks them up on wikipedia
Nasty Nas, The Harajoku Barbie, The Snowman, Skateboard P, Pusha Ton, The Doggfather, etc etc…
…And it really offends you THAT much that you have to comment on it?
The suffocation cleared his brain enough to make 2 good albums that followed.
the album after “i am” was “nastradamus,” pretty much universally agreed upon as his worst album. he followed that with two good ones though
I Am was a pretty good album – I forget about it sometimes, but every time I play it, I remember why I like it
it would have been ironic if he had died dressed as a king mummy
Look for the really meaning of Nas’ covers, it’s somewhere on the net. This guy didn’t look under the surface. They’re build off the bible and every little detail has a deep meaning.
*real