Rick Ross : God Forgives, I don't
The “God Forgives, I don’t” deluxe edition album by artist
Rick Ross was released in 2012. This album cover has much more depth to it in
my opinion than the normal edition album cover.
The normal edition
album cover is very simplistic as it just has a dominant background with a
picture of the artist in the middle. However generic conventions can be seen
with in this album cover for example the artist is wearing more than one gold
chain which is a symbol of wealth and through the glasses which he is wearing
we can see the skyline of a city which could represent luxury. One of the main
themes which songs are based on in the hip hop industry is money and the idea
that the more money you have, the higher you are in the game or in other words
the more successful you are. Therefore it would only be expected that Rick Ross
would want to portray this image of being wealthy and living luxuriously in his
album cover.
Unlike the normal edition album cover, the deluxe edition
has much more going on. Both editions include the sentence “the untouchable
Maybach Music Empire presents” at the top of the album covers and the artist
name and title of the album are in the same font on both editions also. The
artist name instead of using “s” to spell “Rick Ross” use’s the dollar sign so
it is spelt “Rick Ro$$”. Once again referring back to money and the theme that
“money is everything”. However the deluxe edition differs from the normal
edition as the colour scheme has dramatically changed. The deluxe edition
colour scheme is predominantly gold with black fading in from the bottom. The
background is of a golden church with a silhouette of the artist at the bottom
of the album cover. Having a predominantly gold album cover is also another
symbolic code for wealth as gold is expensive.
Roughly around the middle of the album cover there are
clouds faded into the picture and at the top of the album cover is a picture of
Rick Ross posing with his with his arms out looking down on the silhouette.
This position which Rick Ross is posing in is a symbolic code to the way in
which Jesus or God is perceived in Christian pictures as he is opening his arms
in the exact same way Jesus/God is perceived to do and also he is above the
clouds which could be perceived as him being in heaven. The idea of Rick Ross
being in heaven could also go back to the generic theme through out hip hop of
wealth and luxuries and the life he is living now because of these things could
be perceived as his “heaven”. This also refers back to his title of “God
Forgives, I don’t” as from the album cover he is taking the position of God and
so connotes that he is in a position to make judgements like God and does not
want to forgive. Intertextuality is also used within this album cover as the
font used for the title “God Forgives, I don’t” is similar to the font used for
the title of the films “The Godfather”. In these films decisions had to be made
on who died which could be seen as these actors also acting like God and so
this album cover also portrays that idea as I previously said of making serious
judgements to connote the title.
Like in the normal edition we see he is wearing gold
jewellery and his glasses have the city scenery in them. The fact that he is
main focus of the album cover as his picture takes up over half of the cover is
a convention which many albums covers use. By doing this it attract the
audience as they are able to recognize the artist face and that it is their
album before they read the name or album title.
The parental advisory symbol on the album shows a level of
maturity of album and is quite stereotypical of a Hip Hop album as many lyrics
included in any hip hop song will include some offensive language.
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