Scum Fuck Flower Boy

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Tyler, The Creator's brand new album cover, Scum Fuck Flower Boy, painted by Eric White.

White, a visual artist, is hardly new to doing cover art. Before the Ann Arbor, Mich. native attended the Rhode Island School of Design (better known as RISD), he always loved the work seminal pop artists Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton did for The Beatles album covers (Blake did Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Hamilton did The White Album).

In the mid-1990s, White started designing covers for acts like Korn, Frank Zappa, Incubus and The Meices before stepping away from commercial work for awhile in the early 2000s to focus on his own stuff.

Based in New York and L.A., the 49-year-old White has been a keen rap listener since 1984, when he bought his first two rap records: Run-DMC’s King of Rock and The Fat Boys’ eponymous debut album. An ardent fan of Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest, he also names MF DOOM and Kool Keith as two of his favorite MCs, in case you didn’t think he has his hip-hop bona fides.

White’s also been a Tyler fan since the early days of Odd Future. When OF came to New York to perform at Highline Ballroom in May 2011, White was in the crowd drinking in the madness. Fast forward six years and he’s doing Tyler’s album cover.

His art has an absurdist bent to it (White likes to say he’s drawn to “disturbing” work), and seeing how Tyler often takes liberties with his own imagination, it makes sense the 26-year-old rapper would be attracted to the dark-yet-whimsical qualities of White’s work. Recently, White’s even done a series of his own album covers riffing on classic cover art from throughout the years.

Read More: Eric White Talks Making Tyler, The Creator's 'Scum F*#k Flower Boy' Album Cover - XXL | http://www.xxlmag.com/news/2017/07/eric-white-tyler-creator-scum-fuck-flower-boy-album-cover/?trackback=fbshare_top_flat_4&trackback=tsmclip