The original core of Mandrill were three brothers from Brooklyn (by way of Colón, Panama): Carlos, Lou and Ric Wilson. The Album: Mandrill's Just Outside of Town (Polydor, 1973) Stop #4: Century City: Avenue of the Stars and Olympic But the statue is gated off so unless you want to trespass on church property, you can't stunt like The D.O.C. And then, for The D.O.C.'s 2003 album, Deuce, he returned to the same location to shoot that album's cover photo. either sat or kneeled beneath the "King of Kings" inscription. and Ruthless must have been happy with the results: not only did they use photos from the shoot for the album cover, but they revisited the same session for the cover of "It's Funky Enough," where The D.O.C. "We wanted to make it seem a little more different than if you were just driving by it." Roth put a strobe light on The D.O.C., "separately from the statue itself, just to make him pop away from it." The D.O.C. "We want to light it so it looked artificial: bright colors, heavier shadows," he recalled. The album cover makes it look as if the statue was in a dark cemetery, rather than a well-light, open street corner and Roth recalls that it was their goal to dramatize the shot. was pretty unstructured just because those guys wouldn't do that many sit-downs with the art department," he said, laughing. Roth didn't pick the Christ the King Catholic Church location but told me he was fairly certain it wasn't Atlantic's choice either: " weren't so keen about working within that structure of Atlantic Records. Dre wife) Michel'le, R&B crooner Keith Sweat, and the short-lived N.W.A. At the time, Roth was working with Atlantic Records and ended up also shooting press photos for Ruthless singer (and future Dr. were unsuccessful but I did track down the original photographer, David Roth. Standing nearly 20 feet tall, the statue is made of Italian marble and came from the hands of designer A.J. The statue dates back to the early 1960s when the parish commissioned it to celebrate their 25th anniversary. statue." It graces the front of Christ the King Catholic Church, just south of Melrose Ave. The Search: This was easy I had actually driven past the statue in the past and immediately thought, "Hey, it's the D.O.C. stands in front of a tall statue, upon which is inscribed a verse from 1 Timothy 6:15: "King of Kings, Lord of Lords." Recent advances in throat surgery may make a fuller recovery possible.įor the cover of No One Can Do It Better, the D.O.C. It derailed his career momentum, though he stayed on as a go-to songwriter and released two subsequent albums. Dre and this, his debut album, scorched the hip-hop charts with singles like " It's Funky Enough." No One Can Do It Better eventually hit #1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop charts but then, in late 1989, The D.O.C. A gifted rapper originally from Dallas, The D.O.C. was a fast-rising star out of the Ruthless camp (N.W.A., Dr.
The Album: The D.O.C.: No One Can Do It Better(Ruthless, 1989).
Part 2 continues me and photographer Bobby Chakrabarti's adventure as we scoured the Southland for locations captured in LP photos. hip-hop artists gathered in a graffiti-tagged alley.
#Eazy e album cover photos series#
In Part 1 of this series about album covers shot in Los Angeles, I described the search for where Art Pepper stood, broken sax in hand, and where a dozen L.A.