Visual Analysis: All Amerikkkan Badass Album Cover

Visual Analysis
All Amerikkkan Badass Album Cover
All Amerikkkan Badass, the sophomore album from proclaimed “Rap King of New York City” Joey Badass, is a pointed message at the government regarding the racial climate and bigoted history of America - and you don’t even need to listen to the album to see the message.

Badass developed an album cover to create a visual that encapsulates the themes of the music itself; a rarity in the rap music space.
If you were to compare Badass’s album cover to that of similar artists, it becomes apparent that he’s doing something unique. Part of this comes from the fact that there are rappers who don’t have a discernibly consistent message in their music, which naturally makes it difficult to create an

encompassing album cover. For example, fellow NYC rapper Tekashi69’s album cover shows him holding a puppy in a rainbow gumdrop forest, which directly contrasts the lyrics in his music containing violence and misogyny. Badass’s ability to set the stage for his music before opening the curtain is what makes his use of visual rhetoric so effective.
In order to effectively analyze the cover of this album, it is important to first discuss the contents of the image itself. There are three primary features existing on the cover, which consist of:
Joey Badass
The American flag
The title of the album, All Amerikkkan Badass.
The focal point of the visual is Badass, who is stretched out of the window and leaning toward the camera. Donning an all black shirt with a rope and noose running along his chest, Badass glares at the audience with both middle fingers raised and a facial expression of someone who possesses an extreme distaste for the antagonist of his album. When viewed alongside the other participants in the image, it becomes clear that the rope alludes to American slavery, which speaks to slavery in a more modern sense when juxtaposed with the gang colors appearing on the flag.
The American flag acts in multiple ways, both as a symbol of the effects of American oppression of black communities and also as an intentionally arrogant message in that Badass is achieving freedom regardless of his circumstances. The paisley texture of the blue and red portions of the flag are clear representations of the gang colors of “bloods” and “crips”, which are the two most prominent gang affiliations in America.
The album title “All Amerikkkan Badass” is situated in the upper third quadrant of the image, in a unusually small font that appears to be comprised of clouds in the sky. The juxtaposition of the title to the other facets of the pictures is articulated as a poignant message on the importance of words vs. the importance of taking action. The car, flag, and Badass are all active participants in the image, determining their own destiny through their motion and journey toward their destination. Conversely, the clouds function as the lone constant in the visual, a piece of social commentary on the nature of worded messages being a part of social movements for all of history. But as Badass illustrates through his active journey for the movement, it takes more than words to achieve societal change.
In terms of rapping about the idea of creating social change, Badass enters the scene behind a long list of rappers and artists who have come before him. According to James Stewart, author of African American Jazz and Rap, Badass is not only rapping about the struggles of his ancestors and the people around him, but also is inherently rapping about his own transcendence as a developing African American man.
“The artist says ‘I write music and rap about my life, my home, and my experience as a young African American male or female in contemporary America’. Yet, idealistically, artists are involved in giving shape to their lived experiences transformed into transcended configurations,” (Stewart).
In order to successfully achieve his intended message, it was essential for Badass to consider his audience before constructing the cover of his album.

Badass, being a 23 year rapper from Brooklyn, garners a fan base primarily composed of young hip hop fans and social activists. This being said, social activism in the realm of today’s youth most often takes place on the internet, a place safe from the dangers of protests that took place back in the Martin Luther King Jr. era. While this safety net is a positive in terms of participation, it has been argued that its passive nature lessens the impact of the activism itself. Coined “cyborg activism” by academic Hans Asenbaum, this brand of activism differentiates from traditional activism in a few key

ways:
“Cyborg activism emerges as the reconfiguration of equality/hierarchy, reason/emotion and nihilism/idealism. Anonymous demonstrates how through the use of contingent and ephemeral digital personae hierarchies in cyborg activism prove more volatile than in face-to-face settings,” (Asenbaum).
It is undeniable whether Badass is taking action on the cover of this album, and equally irrefutable is his message to his fans. Badass possesses the flag as his platform, his disposition as his presence, and his car as a literal vehicle for actively seeking change in the realm of American policy. Badass is not simply stating that a change needs to be made, but educating his audience on the tools needed to achieve the collective goal.
In regards to tools for persuasion, pathos leads the way on the cover of All Amerikkkan Badass.

Badass employs an emotional message in a few different ways, but most notably with the paisley print on the American flag. Drawing direct comparison to the print commonly seen on bandanas and other gang paraphernalia, Badass is making a connection between American oppression of African Americans to the prevalence of gang activity in Black communities.
In the awarding winning novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, Coates places blame for American gang violence on the power structure of the American government, and the damage subtle wordings and policy can inflict on black bodies.
“But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body,”

(Coates).
Through his use of persuasive visual imagery, Badass is able to provide a visual example of this brand of American oppression through the lens of his perception of the American flag. In his novel, Coates discusses the constant abuse of power by white authorities on black bodies, which then leads to the commoditization of power in black neighborhoods, which in turn leads to drastically heightened statistics of violence in these communities. Badass’s album cover is able to encompass this message, with his middle fingers personifying the Black outrage of oppression.
This album cover is also poignant in relation to American history. The alteration of the word “Amerikkkan” is undoubtably intended to symbolize the presence of KKK-esque racist behaviors still existing in the USA. While it may be a slight stretch to assume the exact examples of racism that Badass is referring to, it is within reason to suggest that Badass may be alluding to what many call “modern day slavery” in the epidemic of mass incarceration. In Challenging Mass Incarceration in the City of Care: Punishment, Community, and Residential Placement by Elizabeth Brown and Amy Smith, the authors discuss an idealistic solution to the crisis of mass incarceration: “Challenges to mass incarceration often come from places seeking to bolster “community” sanctions and community-based alternatives to punishment. In the City of Care, local community activists challenged growing rates of juvenile incarceration and the overrepresentation of youth of color in juvenile detention by advocating for a community-based “circle of care,” (Brown and Smith).
In addition to this message, the rope flowing across Badass’s shirt on the album cover is a clear allusion to the slavery existing in America pre Civil War, and the modern undertone of the flag is enough that it stands to reason that he is discussing slavery in a modern sense.
Through his use of poignant and recognizable symbols on the cover of his album, Joey Badass is able to encapsulate the unresolved problems that activists have been battling for centuries. A similar movement to this was seen in the mid 1990’s, as there were multiple movements beginning to form which would force the public to confront the racial tensions in one form or another, “The traumas of the Million Man March and the O. J. Simpson verdict have forced America to focus its gaze once again on its lingering racial crisis. In sharpening our focus, they have done at least one good. By casting too bright a light on the realities of our unfinished racial agenda, they have scrambled the sordid use of coded and covert racial rhetoric by conventional politicians. We must now call a spade a spade, and, while it is good old American politics to fan racial division while pretending the opposite, it is far too risky to appear clearly to be doing so. But what exactly is the crisis upon which we again gaze?” (Patterson). Once slightly more ambiguous, this crisis has become more apparent in modern times where information and news travel faster than ever due to the increasingly ubiquitous nature technology.
Badass’s ability to contrive meaning through the use of visual rhetoric is one of the reasons that he is able to achieve such high levels of success as an artist. His understanding of audience, pathos, style, and social critique allow him to elevate the depth of his projects as he transcends himself through the process.