Inside right of Digipak (Disc holder)

Inside left of Digipak

Back of Digipak

Digipak Front Cover

Ancillary Product - Website

CLICK HERE TO VIEW MY WEBSITE

Digipak Idea

I had the idea of using the same background as I used for the website on the digipak and then pasting pictures of the lead singer and maybe the band over the top.

I could also use pictures of locations on the digipak to match the urban genre of the artist/digipak design

Genre Analysis - Hip Hop/Rap

Hip hop music, also called rap music is a genre that commonly accompanies rapping, its developed as part of hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four elements: MCing, DJing, break dancing and graffiti writing. Other elements of hip hop include samping and beatboxing. 

Hip hop's golden era is given to a period where the genre started to hit mainstream popularity. There was a strong jazz influence in the music and a political influence to the lyrical work. A few artists that are commonly associated with this era are Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers, Gang Starr, Big Daddy Kane and De La Soul. The golden age is noted for its innovation "when it seemed that every new single reinvented the genre" according to the Rolling Stone magazine. Gangsta Rap also began to become increasingly noticed in this period of time, influenced by the violent lifestyles of inner-city black youths. This subgenre was mainly influenced by rappers such as Ice T, NWA and Schoolly D, gangsta rap quickly became the most commercially lucrative sub genre of hip-hop 

The 1990's saw a real push towards the mainstream from the genre, artists such as Sugarhill Gang, Run-DMC, MC Hammer, Dr. Dre, Wu Tang Clan, Snoop Dogg, Cypress Hill and Public Enemy had a huge influence on making the genre more commercially viable. This continued to flourish as underground artists began to gain popularity in the UK, Asia and Africa. For example British hip-hop began to spawn its own artists such as Dizzee Rascal, The Streets and Wiley.

The popularity of hip-hop continued to grow through the 2000's Dr. Dre was still an integral figure as he produced albums such as the Marshall Mathers LP by Eminem and Get Rich or Try Dyin' by 50 Cent which debuted at number one in the US charts. Jay-Z represented a cultural triumph oh hip-hop, he went from being a performing artist to a label president, head of a clothing line, club owner and market consultant - he also managed to break Elvis Presley's record for most number one albums on the Billboard magazine charts by a solo artist. In more recent times artists such as Kanye West, Gnarls Barkley, OutKast, M.I.A, Kid Cudi, J. Cole, Lupe Fiasco, Odd Future and B.o.B have all become successful hip-hop artists to a wider audience. 

Final Storyboard

Website Analysis 2 - Odd Future

Odd future website analysis from samhaines

Website Analysis 1 - Green Day

Green day powerpoint from samhaines

Band Name

Whilst creating our website on wix, we began thinking of band names that would match the image of the band. We started thinking of band names that were in the same genre as ours (e.g Arctic Monkeys, The View, The Pigeon Detectives, The Libertines). We wanted to make sure the band name matched the look and style of the song we were using for our music video.

We came up with the band name 'The Spies' as we believed it had similarities to the above band names of popular indie artists. The band name we used also meant we could play around with creating an interesting logo.

Also, our featuring artist Lady Sovereign would need renaming, but this time we needed to think up an artist name that would fit the grime/hip-hop genre. We came up with the name Miss Currency and we took influence for this name from several different female hip-hop and grime artists