The Stylishly Alternative Covers

The Roots: Things Fall Apart (1999) This landmark album was released for a limited time with five different cover images, all in black and white and all of social disasters. This one -- of white police officers chasing black teenagers through Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in the era of the Civil Rights Movement -- is by far the most striking and perfectly fits the intelligent, socially-conscious ethos of the music (also embodied in the album titled, taken from Chinua Achebe's archetypal African novel). -- MJ