J-Live

I designed the album artwork for J-Live’s first two releases and gave the New York rapper’s early records one visual identity. His debut, The Best Part, is widely seen as a landmark of underground hip-hop. The follow-up, All of the Above, gets called an underground classic, and it peaked at #16 on the Billboard Independent Albums chart.

The All of the Above cover is a nod to John Coltrane’s Blue Train. Underground fans pay close attention to packaging, and that reference said where J-Live belongs in the lineage.