Building a Black Hole Superette for Aesop Rock
Justin Coro Kaufman’s cover for rapper Aesop Rock’s new album brings all the graffiti and signage of a shopfront and street scene alive
Kaufman, who is known for his hand-drawn work as a concept artist, R&D designer and illustrator, has worked with Aesop Rock on numerous projects over the years, including creating a hand-drawn cover for his 2023 album, Integrated Tech Solutions.
In contrast, the cover for Black Hole Superette (Rhymesayers Entertainment) resembles a 3D stage set and, while designed to look like a real location, it is just one part of a maximalist design approach throughout the release (and music video for single Checkers), with ramped-up colours and surreal overtones.
In a post detailing the sleeve’s construction, Kaufman says that the concept for the design is a “subtle spiritual tribute” to the cover of Ice-T’s 1988 album, Power, the front cover of which is a Glen E Friedman photograph, with the ‘reverse’ of the image appearing on the back of the sleeve.
“Conceptually, it’s so dope to do the front/back reveal like that,” Kaufman writes of the Ice-T cover. “The similar frontal, centred composition of the storefront was the perfect opportunity to create a mirrored back view of the cover.”
Built in 3DS Max and rendered in V-Ray, both views of the street scene are also chock-full of details including graffiti tags and signage. “I found that you have to make a lot of peripheral materials to make a scene like this feel complete,” says Kaufman.
“Signage, stickers, graffiti, and little details like the cigarette butts on the floor or the scribes and smudges on the glass really help complete the idea. I modelled and textured a good amount of this, and kitbashed/modified found elements that could work.”
The gatefold sleeve for the deluxe edition of the record has perforated ‘doors’ on the front and back, one of which even reveals a further surprise.
“The front door, back door and ice machine physically open up to reveal additional images,” says Kaufman. “The front door has a scratch off lottery ticket underneath it.”
The slip covers also features images of floating bottles and cans in a kind of vortex around the centre of the album label.
“These albums are so much fun to work on,” says Kaufman. “Often when you’re on a large campaign there can be so many stakeholders that ideas can get dumbed down or muddled in the spirit of compromise. Aes is one of those rare clients where it truly feels like a collaboration. Creatively we’re very aligned, which makes it a lot of fun coming up with and executing on these projects.”
Kaufman also made the music video for Checkers, the first single from the album, which takes the viewer back to the Black Hole Superette world.
