The art of album cover photography is usually glamorous, often controversial, and sometimes even dangerous. Celebrity photographer Danny Hastings knows this all too well. As Hastings says in a new interview, a recent shoot for the cover of rapper Nas’ new album, ‘I Am,’ almost went terribly wrong when he nearly killed the star.
Hastings, a Panama-born photographer and cinematographer who has shot over 150 album covers and directed a dozen music videos, tells MTV News that the concept for the Egyptian-inspired cover came from Nas’ 1994 album, ‘Illmatic.’ The idea was to try and do an update of the image, which features Nas as a young boy.
“The first one, you have him being a boy, very young. The second was a little bit older. And the third one, he was a king. He already conquered the world. He was on top of the world. He was doing a lot of big things. We came with the concept of making a King Tut sarcophagus piece,” Hastings said.
Hastings and his team then made a mold of Nas’ face, which required poking holes into the clay mix when it got to his nose. But then something went wrong and Nas’ breathing passage became clogged.
“The funny part was that the first attempt, Nas was getting asphyxiated. We almost killed Nas,” Hastings said.
Well it’s nice to see Hastings can keep his sense of humor about almost killing an international superstar. Luckily the photographer was able to get Nas some air again after removing his clay mask.
“We cleaned him up, and he was like, ‘Let’s do it again!’ he said. “Nas was a true sport.”
Amazingly, the above photograph is the actual mask without any digital retouching. Considering how realistic the finished mold looks, it seems Nas’ hard time might have been worth it. Now he can breathe easy.
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Awesome! Always wondered this cover was created.