By Bryson Sheriff
Question any artist from any genre, and they will likely tell you that one of the hardest things about being a successful musician is building a loyal fan base. In a world of infinite singers, rappers, rock bands, instrumentalists, and so on, one of the hardest tasks is persuading music fans to listen to you, rather than any of the millions of other artists they can access in a matter of seconds from their smartphone. Implementing effective public rhetoric is one tactic that can make this seemingly impossible task of attracting fans substantially easier. An important, visual aspect of this rhetoric is creating enticing covers and titles for your albums, which is what this series of blogs is all about. Today in my second entry, I will be talking about Logic's 2020 hip-hop album, No Pressure.
I am a big fan of this cover art, created by Sam Spratt, because of its face value relating to the title of the album, as well as the more concealed backstory that fans of Logic's older works can quickly recognize in the illustration.
The condition you immediately notice in this artwork is that everything, including Logic himself, appears to be floating, almost as if there is no gravity holding them back. Now, quite literally, gravity is a force that keeps you chained to the Earth. So, when this weight is no longer pulling on you and you are moving freely through the air, you are under No Pressure, hence this cover's appropriate representation of the title. The significant contrast between the grayish, blackish ground that was holding everything down and the bright, orange abyss Logic and these items are rising towards further this drawing's theme of no longer being restrained by the world and its byproducts.
Another aspect of the cover that you quickly notice is the type of items that Logic is surrounded by. You can quickly identify some computer and music equipment, as well as various household furniture pieces. The average person would assume that this was maybe an office, living room, or bedroom before everything began to seemingly levitate off of the floor. However, this artwork and the project's title are actually direct references to Logic's first studio album, Under Pressure, which was released 6 years earlier. The cover art for that 2014 project can be seen below.
You can see now that the No Pressure cover is actually a continuation of this Under Pressure artwork above. As explained here in an MTV article, this room is actually a friend's basement where Logic and his team worked to create the music that would later elevate them to fame. Even though the hopeful, bright shades of orange peer through the window in this 2014 cover, Logic and his companions are still clearly working hard to one day rise into the limelight as he eventually does as shown on the No Pressure cover. Synonymous with the conflicting connection between the cover art, the themes presented in the albums have a sharp contrast as well.
Logic's first album Under Pressure discusses the struggles of growing up in a drug-ridden household where he had no parental guidance and was unable to finish high school. The pressure of making a name for himself despite starting with nothing, as well as the guilt associated with feeling as if something was owed to his manipulative family all contributed to the content of the title track and the rest of the relatively grave songs.
However, No Pressure has songs with themes in correlation with this title, feeling as if you no longer have the weight of the world on your shoulder, and are free from the countless stresses of life. The titles of Tracks like "No Pressure," "Celebration," and "Amen" show that this album is about Logic being content with the life and career he has made. He no longer feels the need to prove anything to anybody as he did on his first album. "He’s now in a more comfortable place and is no longer worried about what journalists have to say about his standing in the rap game," stated one article about the album from Billboard.
To tie everything together, I believe I am such a huge fan of the No Pressure artwork because of how well it represents the album and the feelings of the songs within it. The freeing picture of having no gravity holding you back as well as the beautiful shades of orange and yellow use visual rhetoric to perfectly describe what the project is all about, just as the title does. I also love how nearly everything about the album, including all of the rhetoric, directly relates to the older, polar opposite aspects of the Under Pressure album. I believe that here Spratt created a cover that could persuade a rap fan to listen to No Pressure even if they had never heard of Logic or his music.
[2 images, 1 quotation, 4 links, 817 words]
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