Pop-Up Book Circus Art Fun With T-Pain

While hardly comics related, at the record store yesterday, I noticed the really cool art and design on the 12-inch single of T-Pain and Lil Wayne's song "Can't Believe It". The design and overall weirdness of T-Pain's latest album Thr33 Ringz (out in November) has been a topic of discussion in the hip-hop world and tons of places are posting the circus-themed cover art, but no one's talking about who actually did this art. My plan for this post was to you know, figure it out but an all-day search on the internet's revealed nothing. Anybody out there know?


The cohesion of the entire package is great, as each single copies an old-time circus poster, with a Medusa-esque T-Pain at the top and a equally fun caricature of the guest and then, a layer of color over the whole thing that's appropriate to the song (an icey blue for the Chris Brown featuring "Freeze"). The caricatures remind me a lot of BAPE master Nigo's work--especially the art for Pharrell Williams' In My Mind--and maybe he had something to do with this, but there's less robotic, factory-line imagery here and more, spare in some places, expressive in others line here. Notice T-Pain's nose, Lil Wayne's tattoos, or Ludacris' perfect smirk. On the back of the album itself, each guest on Thr33 Ringz gets one of these illustrations and they're all surrounding T-Pain, who's at the center of some carnival game wheel or something.


The album cover itself, plays it a little more safe, with a silhouette of ringmaster T-Pain and circus iconography in the background. Conceptually it's cool because the cover is the introduction to the music--the main attraction--which you'll only get to hear once you buy the CD, but there's an added surprise...the interior album art folds and pops-up and makes a kinda mini-circus itself!