The album with a zillion covers
Minneapolis rapper P.O.S. (who plays next Monday at the High Noon Saloon) told Decider in an interview a couple of years ago that he’d like to “make some lighthearted songs…. but until then, I’ll just be really nerdy.” That attitude still comes through in the rhymes on his new album, Never Better, where he hammers on the serious stuff like the hardcore punk-rocker that he is, while also slipping in some off-handed humor: “Lungs like California raisins / singin’ some kinda blues version / of search and destroy / I’m talkin’ Stooges / weathered tissue and bruises/ Iggy raw / respect or step back / cute is what we aim at.” And now you can share in P.O.S.’s nerdiness not only through the music, but also through packaging.
If you actually went out and bought Never Better last week, you’ve likely noticed that his rhymes are still on the attack and his beats keep trying out new musical ideas, and that the CD comes with a whole lot of extra stuff. That is, five plastic transparencies and a perforated set of liner notes meant to be torn into 16 panels. The idea is to slip these, in different configurations, into the plastic sleeve, creating any number of your own versions of the album cover. Artist Eric Carlson demonstrates many of the possibilities on his website, and P.O.S. does so in this video:
The CD itself, the digipak’s clear plastic front, and one of the transparencies sport a pattern of magenta, cyan, and yellow stripes, so just spinning the CD around in there yields a primary-color kaleidoscope. Each image from the liner notes corresponds to the lyrics of the song on the back. A blacked-out version of that famous Obama “Hope” poster goes with album opener “Let It Rattle,” on which P.O.S. challenges: “You think a president could represent you? You really think a president would represent you?”
Meanwhile, “Savion Glover” pairs with what looks like a playful Glover “family” coat of arms: Crispin, Danny, and Savion over a “G.” (And a picture of Danny Glover himself shows up on the flip-side of “The Brave And The Snake.”) There are some more blunt symbols, though: Behind the lyrics to “Drumroll” is a redacted copy of the Declaration Of Independence. P.O.S. is also a deft beatmaker, and one of the transparencies simply reads “Kick & Snare & Kick & High Hat.” In short, packaging like this will also feel a little gimmicky, but at least it encourages people to actually pay attention to the music. The image that shows up on the cover initially is a transparency of two skulls over a profile of P.O.S. himself. The image pairs well with an anatomical verse on its corresponding song, “Purexed”: “Fuck your skin, nobody needs it, there’s / bones muscles and blood / what’s realer than fat and tendons? It’s raw, no soft tissue to draw your eyes to it, so far it ain’t the truest at all, let’s rip into it.”
