Cover Story: Album Cover Art

“Reading Wax Poetics, Brooklyn’s glossy, reverent, visually immaculate zine dedicated to funk, soul, hip hop, and the other obsessions of crate-diggers worldwide, is enough to make you wish neither compact discs nor the Internet had ever been invented.”
—The Village Voice

Cover Story: Album Cover Art, the second book from celebrated music mag Wax Poetics, vividly explores an element of music culture that has withered with the advent of MP3s and digital downloading. Vinyl records tell their stories visually as much as they do aurally, and the record cover—eye candy for the music lover—speaks a language rooted in the environment and era of the music itself. Cover Story is a coffee-table ready collection of rare, unique, and inspired album covers, selected by a team of world-renowned DJs, writers, and collectors.

First published in December 2001, Brooklyn-born Wax Poetics hit newsstands with a new vision for music journalism, creating a bridge between the past and present of Hip Hop, jazz, funk, soul, reggae, disco, and Latin music. Although originally created for a concentrated market of music aficionados, the magazine’s audience has grown exponentially, making musical anthropologists out of average music listeners and spawning a soul renaissance, complete with comeback tours and sophomore effor ts. Wax Poetics illuminates the dark corners of our sonic past, while also striving to give new and innovative artists the credit they truly deserve.