5 album covers in our archive
Kendrick Lamar is featured in Behind the Covers' archive with 5 album covers spanning the 2020s and 2010s. Released across PGLang/Interscope Records, PGLang / Top Dawg Entertainment / Aftermath Entertainment / Interscope Records, Top Dawg Entertainment, Top Dawg Entertainment / Aftermath Entertainment / Interscope Records and Interscope Records / Top Dawg Entertainment / Aftermath Entertainment labels, the artwork sits in the hip-hop, r&b, jazz, funk tradition. Each cover is documented in our archive with design notes covering photography, minimalist, portrait, iconic, polaroid, intimate. Below you'll find the full story behind each Kendrick Lamar cover — designers, photographers, label history, and the visual choices that defined the release.
Cover evolution
Chris Burnett designed the GNX package under creative direction from Dave Free and Kendrick Lamar, using Dave Free's black-and-white photograph of Kendrick beside the Buick as the central motif. Burnett says the car was meant to carry the music's unapologetic boldness, while the physical vinyl turns its wheel rim into the record label.
On the cover of Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, Kendrick Lamar turns his back to us, a diamond crown of thorns glinting in his braids, his daughter on his hip. Behind him, in a peeling room with a gun in sight, his fiancée nurses an infant. It is a family portrait built from faith, fatherhood, and unease.
Shot in a single afternoon in Compton, this deceptively simple Polaroid-style cover became one of hip-hop's most powerful statements on Black masculinity and vulnerability. The raw intimacy of Kendrick's expression contrasts sharply with typical rap album imagery.
A black-and-white house party erupts on the White House lawn, dollar bills fanned in fists, a baby cradled in the crowd, and a dead judge sprawled at everyone's feet. Kendrick Lamar's 2015 photograph turned the seat of American power into a stage for the kids he grew up with in Compton.
A maroon minivan sits on a cracked Compton street under a hard blue sky, bent slightly by a fisheye lens. It's the deluxe face of Kendrick Lamar's 2012 album, whose standard cover is a real family Polaroid: a toddler Kendrick on his uncle's lap, the adults' eyes blacked out, a 40-ounce beside a baby bottle.
