Pete & Amy: Critics At Large I

Joining me for this post is my American friend Amy, and as 'critics' we will offer our viewpoints on different graphic artforms, such as album cover art, music videos and other stuff. In this way, we will comment on the same theme and hopefully get some different perspectives. Let's get on with our first album cover:

Lil' Kim – La Bella Mafia (2003).

Amy: I have always liked Lil' Kim's music and even now I go on Youtube to watch her videos. I love her style of rapping because she doesn't hold back the way she feels. She is the best female rapper. She looks pretty on the album cover, but she keeps changing her image and it's hard to tell it's her sometimes. I like her most with black hair, I think it brings out her eyes. Her style of dress is unique, but I don't think it was necessary for Kim to be topless and have those black things over her nipples, but hey, at least she covered some parts of her up! I'm not against it because that's the way she expresses herself, and she also tries to be known as a sex symbol so she does things like that to get attention, but she could've just had on a long tight dress and that would be sexy also.

Pete: I don't actually own this album (but I have heard all her others) so I don't know who put this cover together, but I have to wonder why there's a car and two guys standing on the water's surface. That's Photoshop cover art for you I guess. After studying graphic design I tend to pay more attention to whether something's been Photoshopped (and if I want to get really dorky about it, what filters they would have used and so on). Anyway, Lil' Kim is one of the few people who could get away with wearing something like this on an album cover. It gets the attention, but you can't have timid album covers with lyrics like hers.