SLAM’s Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins cover is a blinged out ‘90s Southern rap homage

Let’s start this article with the cover, because that’s the whole point:

That’s the cover for SLAM Magazine’s 214th edition, releasing everywhere on Feb. 9. It also became an internet sensation when it was revealed on Wednesday, stopping social media feeds everywhere as scrolling thumbs were forced to click and take a minute to understand what they were looking at.

Yes, that’s Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins, and yes, there’s an alligator, and yes, there’s classic New Orleans iconography surrounded them, and yes, the instantly recognizable “SLAM” lettering is now incrusted with diamonds. Yes, this is a real cover.

It’s an homage to New Orleans and Southern rap album covers, and it’s created by Pen & Pixel, a design firm from Houston that produced some of the most iconic art during the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Hell, it was those covers that helped popularize the entire concept of “bling.” Sure, they break every traditional rule of graphic design, but traditional rules simply don’t wouldn’t work here. You gotta have something gaudy and eye-catching.

SLAM Magazine, the onomatopoeia-turned-iconic-basketball-mag, has never done a cover this ridiculous before. I wanted to know more, so I reached out to Adam Figman, SLAM’s editor-in-chief and head of content. Our conversation is below. This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity and easier reading.

First of all, when I first saw this cover, I think I said ‘holy shit’ out loud alone in my living room. So hopefully that was the reaction you were going for, and congrats.

[laughs] We didn’t know what reaction we were going for, but that’s a good one.

Before we even get to the actual cover design, I want to ask how you got Boogie and AD, and what the process is for selecting what players go on the cover.

I would say the first time the idea the Boogie and AD cover came up was the Sunday before last All-Star weekend — literally the night of the trade. Me and a couple other SLAM editors were walking from the arena to the hotel, staring at our phone, checking the updates and saw that the trade was official. One of us said that would actually be an amazing cover. It didn’t come together right away — they didn’t come out of the gate too hot — so it never materialized (that season).

Our senior editor, Peter Walsh, brought up the idea headed into the season, and there was a lot going on. We just didn’t get to it. And then about a month ago, I thought of the idea at the same time as doing the Pen & Pixel idea. It came together, all together — it wasn’t that we had the cover and (then) thought of integrating the Pen & Pixel design after the fact. It was all birthed out of one plan. Once I saw that this cover could look so different than any other SLAM cover and that it could be this special moment with this very specific design, that fits into it perfectly considering the New Orleans angle; that’s how I sold it to myself.

From there, we reached out to the Pelicans. They were amazing to work with. We got it done, and I’d say it was all a pretty big success.

It was immediately clear to me that this album cover was Pen & Pixel influenced, but I didn’t realize you actually got Pen & Pixel until later. How did that happen?

Yeah, I’ve known about Pen & Pixel for a long time. I grew up listening to Juvenile records and New Orleans rap. There’s a really good Noisey documentary about Pen & Pixel, and I recommend anyone checking it out.

To get them, it took a lot of googling. I found (the founder) Shawn Brauch’s email, I think I shot him a Facebook message, a LinkedIn message, I left him a voicemail. I just wanted to make sure I got through to him somehow. And he finally got back to me, and he was super excited about the idea.

Pen & Pixel worked for rappers throughout the entire South in the ‘90s, but New Orleans is kind of where they made their name. Just the fact that it takes half a second to recognize the aesthetic, it was important then when album covers were so important to a rapper’s career. But it’s important now when you see a social graphic or a magazine cover or a photo on a Twitter timeline or an Instagram timeline or a Facebook timeline, and you really have one second to grab someone’s attention or else they will keep scrolling. So that’s kind of why I think it works so well. You can’t see it and keep scrolling. You had to take a second and look at it, which is why it worked.

There will be people who don’t know Pen & Pixel, who don’t know ‘90s rap covers, who see this and say, “Wow, this is hideous.” For a classical designer, it’s not necessarily the correct way to do things. But obviously, if you know the references, you know what it’s an homage to and what it represents. It’s as well done as anything I’ve seen. Was that the thinking when you decided on this cover as well?

Yeah, you do have to get the reference, and even if you don’t get it specifically, if you don’t know Pen & Pixel by name or you don’t know a Juvenile album or couldn’t name a Master P album, you just know the aesthetic. I was looking through Reddit comments this morning, and there was a lot of, ‘What the hell is this. This photoshop is trash. Whoever made this doesn’t know anything about graphic design.’ There were people who just did not get it, and that’s something we knew would happen. You realize there were a few people who just don’t get it, or get it and don’t think it’s cool, and as a brand we just have to swallow that and that’s fine.

I think you tweeted that this might be your favorite SLAM cover yet. It has got to be right up there, right?

I’ve been at SLAM, with the exception of a couple months, since 2010 when I started as an intern. Basically, I was counting now through then. I’ve worked on a lot of covers, and even before I was on a senior level there, I would at least be in the office while some of the other people were working on covers, or I would push the covers out digitally or on social. So I’ve been in the mix since 2010, and yeah, I’d probably say that — gun to my head — this is my absolute favorite.

The only one that is even in competition with it is the one I worked on with DeMar DeRozan, Kyle Lowry, and Drake (in May 2016.) Making that come together and getting a cover with the guy who’s the biggest music star in the world, (and) to also be the first non-basketball player or coach on the cover of SLAM, and then he posted on his Instagram and said that it was a lifelong bucket list moment for him. So that was a pretty iconic SLAM moment.

But I would put this right up there with that, as someone who has listened to New Orleans hip-hop my entire life. I’m absolutely in love with some of those old album covers, so it did mean a lot.

Was there anything else that stood out about the process?

The only direction that we really gave Pen & Pixel was the blinged-out SLAM logo and the blinged-out cover line or “2 REAL” since we knew it would be up front. And we told him that we wanted that moody New Orleans look. He killed it. It looks amazing.

The first version came back and got passed around the office, and there were little tweaks we had to make. But more or less we were done. It was great. And it ended up getting passed around, but SLAM senior editor Peter Walsh randomly mumbled, “I think that’s a crocodile.” And it turned out the first version had a crocodile, not an alligator. And there’s no crocodiles in Louisiana.

It was a total innocent mistake. Multiple editors on staff missed it. We just saw an animal and figured it was a gator, figured New Orleans gator, and it was an amazing idea. It was 100 percent Pen & Pixel’s idea to throw the gator on there that big, right on front. It just comes from having a certain style of thinking that I could never have myself. You just need to be a certain type of genius to think of that.

But then we had this moment where I was direct messaging on Twitter alligator and crocodile experts, trying to figure out if this animal was a crocodile or an alligator, because apparently they have different snouts. I didn’t know the difference, and it was a photo taken from a weird angle, so you couldn’t tell which one it was. A bunch of people were, like, “Crocodile, crocodile, crocodile,” so that’s when I realized we screwed up.

We ended up replacing the crocodile with an alligator, but if it wasn’t for Pete’s random thought that maybe it was the wrong animal, we probably would have put it out with a crocodile instead of an alligator, which would have been a huge oversight on our part.

Yeah, the 15 people that would have noticed would have been very upset with you, I’m sure.

Yeah, if we ended up doing that, there would be a weird undercurrent of people dropping, “Well, actually,” on me, so it would have been little sad angle of an otherwise pretty perfect cover, so I’m glad we got that fixed.

I guess you dove into “Crocodile Twitter” and “Alligator Twitter” to determine what it was, so it does exist. You don’t want to piss them off!

100 percent. I was direct messaging with people who have PhDs in alligator biology, and conservationists who specialize in swampland. It was amazing. It was one of the most absurd situations I’ve been put in as an editor of a basketball magazine, but I guess this job will throw everything at you.

You can purchase SLAM 214 on Feb. 9, and see the Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins interview and more photos here.