Some album covers take on lives of their own. Lauryn Hill only has one solo, and it’s become so symbolic of her work that people have it tattooed on their bodies. These covers carry the weight of the work and who that artist was at the time, way beyond the album cycle.
And even in this era of consuming music, where your new favorite artists may connect with you in the form of a DM from a friend or a random TikTok on your FYP, there’s so much more to find in the experience of an album cover and what it means to a body of work.
The art of an album cover is not lost on the creatives of today. And when you think of artists that had huge breakout years early on in their career, you have to count Leon Thomas. The visual storytelling he and his team have constructed made it clear that artists are still making statements when they choose cover art.
Director, editor, and all-around creative Phil Meyer, as well as photographer and multihyphenate creator Inari Briana, who both helped bring Thomas’ MUTT Deluxe: HEEL cover to life, can attest to that.
Meyer initially connected with Thomas on the original MUTT album, which had its own creative universe from the very start. And that flowed into the work on HEEL as well.
“It became this whole world,” he explained. “The album cover, photography, visualizers... it made sense to continue this world that we’ve already built.”
And, of course, nothing like this happens without a full team. That’s where Briana came in. Although there was a full team involved, Briana was the photographer who got the money shot for the cover.
“I got on this project because of Phil and David Kwon Kim, the co-founder of Tre Native production company. They asked me if I knew any photographers in New York, and I sent some, but [they weren't] fitting what they were looking for,” she recalled.
All she knew at the time was that the team needed a photographer. She had no specifics on what the project actually was. Experienced in her own right, eventually, Kim pitched Briana for the cover. And the next thing she knew, Briana was shooting the deluxe for one of the top albums of 2024.
As for what it looked like to pull this cover together, Meyer was already primed and ready to continue on the storytelling he had started with Thomas on the original album. “This is Leon’s thought process,” he said. “He really wanted to lean into the storytelling through the dog. This is a continuation of the world we already created through MUTT, which was big on having good intentions but not always doing the right thing. But we wanted to expand it and do something more surreal.”
And nothing says surreal like a dog with grills. Admittedly, both Meyer and Briana were surprised but intrigued by the vision Thomas had for the cover.
“At first, I was like, ‘Are you sure you want to put a grill on a dog?,’” Meyer asked. And, of course, Thomas was absolutely sure about it. “So, we had to figure out, logistically, how we could make that work,” Meyer explained. From there, the team got to it, matching Thomas’ keen eye for detail in his visual storytelling.
Briana started sourcing the perfect hands for the shoot and eventually landed on beauty and fashion influencer Jhaunae Elisha. With help from Atlanta European Dobermans, they also had sourced the dog you see wearing the gold fronts.
As the team pulled together the other elements of the shoot and started the process that day, they had landed on a selection of shots they were sure about.
“Crazy enough, the original photos we had, we loved them. But we had to pivot tremendously in the process,” Briana shared.
The original shots showed two hands opening the dog’s mouth. After they sent the images back to Thomas, it turned out he only wanted one hand on the cover.
“Also in the process, we had a dog. As soon as the dog realized what was going on, most of the day was spent trying to get the dog to open her mouth again because she knew what was happening,” she expressed. “Instead of it being done in 15 minutes, we spent the whole day, all the way into the night, trying to make sure we got it right.”
But that’s the energy and detail that goes into a great album cover, and that intention is what both Meyer and Briana agreed takes a cover from good to great. He noted, “We are constantly scrolling and genuinely overstimulated, so it makes it important to be intentional. The ones who are really doing it are the ones that are thinking in layers, thinking with depth and creating worlds.”
For this pair of creatives, the album art pieces that have stuck with them were the ones that were thought through and curated to tell the story at hand. And that’s what it takes to create a visual moment in this era where we’re flooded with so many images. “There are ways to cut through the noise and the oversaturation,” Meyer confirmed.
Briana knows the landscape we’re in and how accessible it is for anyone to make content. But even with those tools, that extra touch of intention is still what makes a cover stand out. “I take a lot of pride in what I do,” she stated. “Because of that, I have to have intention with everything. Things can look good at the end of the day, but if I don’t feel something in the moment from whatever I’m doing, other people aren’t either,” she expressed. “With the new modern technology, it’s so easy for someone to pick up an iPhone and just do whatever. But even if you have those things, how are you going to make that stand out where it still feels original?”
Both Briana and Meyer have proven what it takes to make a moment out of an album cover, and they know exactly how impactful that is to the legacy of an album. With their commitment to Thomas’ storytelling, they’ve tapped into what made album covers from artists like Earth, Wind, and Fire, Stevie Wonder, or Marvin Gaye so iconic.
“I think it’s the dedication artists put into the craft that drives it for me. That's how old covers were. They literally had the thought, heart, and intention behind it and made it,” Briana said.
The colors, the photos that seem impossible to capture, the symbolism you may not even realize is there — those are the elements that have made album covers so essential in our music. Projects like MUTT and HEEL show us exactly how powerful an album cover can be for a body of music.
Meyer put it simply, stating, “Those are the ones that will always be timeless.”
To learn more about these powerhouse creatives, you can visit their websites at www.inaribriana.com and www.phil-meyer.co.