If you picked up The Pitch or looked online, you may have caught this week's review of Wichita-born, Austin-based rapper Black Nasty's latest, Shark Tank. And if you did, you probably saw that amazing cover, printed all small in tha paper (though I did have to cut significantly from my review to get it run at all) and reproduced here for your visual pleasure:
Yes, that's a baby with a coat hanger in his head. Those are watermelons. The back's even, um, better ...
These covers were painted by local artist Jay Norton, whom music lovers may know because of his death metal art show last year at La Esquina, "Dead Set on Destruction." See more from that exhibition and other awesome work at his Web site, Everythingdies.com.
Shark Tank is Norton's first album cover. I caught up with him a few weeks ago to talk about what it was like to pop his cover-art cherry on such a raunchy project.
The Pitch: How did this come about?
Jay Norton: It was a total MySpace hookup. I read about him somewhere, some blog or something like that -- I think on an art blog -- so I checked out his Web site, and I ordered his CD, Aids Can't Stop Me. I listened to it. I was into it. And then I became his friend on Myspace. And the very next day, I got an e-mail from him. He'd been to my MySpace profile and then to my Web site and seen all my art and basically just said, "Would you be interested in doing the cover to my record?" So, we did it all by e-mail, really. I've never met the dude.
Did he give you any specifications for the design?
He started out with the ideas. He had this idea of him standing with his arms folded -- he's a real visual guy. He had all these ideas. I took those ideas and ran with them, took them to another level. He was saying how he wanted some pillars in there, and I had been wanting for a long time to do a ripoff of the Kiss Love Gun record. So I took the pillars from Love Gun and put them behind ol' Black Nasty. I think Love Gun is one of the funniest album covers of all time. It's a painting of Kiss all standing there with their arms folded by these big Greek pillars and all these girls pawing at their feet. It's pretty hilarious.
He said he wanted it to be like some of these rap records from the late '80s, early 90s, like the first Body Count cover, and I think Ice-T Home Invasion, these real sort of ghetto-looking paintings that they'd use as album covers. So that's where he was coming from. He wanted a painting of him with his arms folded and a shark somewhere else, but it was my idea to make the shark his wiener. ... We went through all sorts of variations - the baby with the hanger in its head, a hairless cat, all sorts of other stuff.
Knowing his taste for controversy, did you hesitate when he asked you to do this?
I was really psyched when he asked me to do it. I was like, "Dude, this is going to be the greatest album cover of all time. If they give out Grammys for album covers, you're gonna win it." I didn't really hesitate on any of it. When he told me about the watermelons, I was like, "Ooh, damn, we're really going there now." [Pertinent detail: The inside of the CD contains a sketch by Norton of a Klansman hanging from a tree by a noose with a Zulu spear through his chest.]
I was totally into it. I've burned flags, desecrated flags, I've done the homoerotic Christian art show, thrown up upside down crosses and satanic pentagrams, and the world mostly just shrugs, so I'm not too worried about it.
Do you like the album?
I've listened to it four or five times now. I'm really into it. Sometimes I'm driving down the road and Coke comes squiritng out of my nose 'cause I can't believe what I just heard. I think if people sorta get it that it's like a Lenny Bruce-type thing where he's saying outrageous, offensive things but it's to make a larger point. -- it's not like this is the way the guy thinks all the time. He's got this character, Black Nasty, a skinny white kid from Wichita, Kansas, who discovers gangsta rap and starts thinking he's a black gangsta rapper. ...
For ten bucks, I was willing to roll the dice. I like to support people like that. I like to throw a couple of bucks here and there to people, to anybody who's on the extreme of anything. I'm interested in extreme right-wing fascists, just like I'm into extreme left-wing conspiracy nuts. ... I like people that are taking some stand, that are doing something different. 99 percent of the world, or at least America, is freaking Banana Republic beige, so anybody that busts out of that deserves some attention or some support.
MP3: from Shark Tank
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