The worst album covers ever #2: hip-hop

Luke - I Got Shit On My Mind

Let's be honest: ridiculing any musical genre that calls Vanilla Ice one of its own is akin to shooting fish in a barrel.

On the other hand, have you ever tried shooting fish in a barrel? Fun for hours!

Recently, MusicRadar kicked off a series called The Worst Album Covers Ever, with our inaugural feature harpooning the lamest and most ludicrous cover art that heavy metal ever spewed forth.

And because we're equal opportunity hecklers, we now turn our cringing, disbelieving (OK, bursting-out-laughing) faces to the world of hip-hop, which has no shortage of album cover wretchedness.

At its best, hip-hop is a vital, challenging, creative musical force in which social commentary is delivered as poetry over beats and instrumentation that rock the body and the senses.

These albums don't do that. Well, they might but you wouldn't know it from their covers.

Enough talk (except for a quick 'WARNING! Some of these are verging on the NSFW but only if you work in a place of worship with a public-facing computer or something').

Hip-hop? We love you man, but sometimes a man's gotta shoot a fish, you know?