Analysis of three Digipaks

The first album I will analyze is Drake's Take Care, he is a rapper from Toronto and is a very popular artist in the rap industry. We can make connections between our own artist and him because they operate within the same genre just from different countries, hip-hop. I couldn't find a digipak so I used his digital booklet which is the equivalent of the digipak in modern terms, most artist nowadays rely on these rather than digipaks. The front cover of the CD uses warm colours and the text is like a hand writing which ties in with our genre because Hip-hop is based on lyricism. There is also some symbolism like the owl which is requerring on almost all the covers. The picture below the cover is of him smoking, it ties in with this genre and with the audience because in hip-hop music there is a lot of drug referencing and it builds up a profile for Drake as an artist of the rap genre.

The next artist digipak is Big Sean's Finally Famous. This is his debut album and he is a hip-hop artist just like our artist is, and what is noticeable about this particular digipak is the promotion of the artist because he is on every panel wearing a lot of jewellery which is like self-promoting himself and it is made to show off his money which is the point of the album is being finally famous. It links to the genre we are also in because in contemporary hip-hop music it is conventional to have a lot of jewellery and women on music videos and it is part of the artist's image as being this person who is wealthy. The audience expects this from an artist like big sean who emphasizes the importance of money in his lyrics as well as videos.

The last album digipak I wanted to analyze was Jay-Z & Kanye West's Watch the Throne which is a collaborative album from two hip-hop heavyweights, taking that into consideration they are already a recognized brand in themselves, this would explain the choice to not have them on the cover because people are already familiar with them. Instead this digipak emphasizes a lot on symbolisms of power and fame. The two panels of the rappers are dark coloured and black and white, it is an edited picture of the two as fierce animals to represent them and hte last one is the american flag with imprints of their brand showing that they have power over their people, which links with the title - the throne being rightfully theirs. This links with our genre because in hip-hop this is common to assert authority and to self-proclaim themselves and this will go noticed by the audience who are used to them boasting about themselves.